Pandora's Box and Fatal Flaws

The story of Pandora and the infamous box actually starts with the Titan Prometheus.  Prometheus formed mankind out of clay and grew to love this race, wanting to teach them everything he knew about math, medicine, language, and many other topics.  The race grew large in number and the gods decided that because of certain understood laws, sacrifices from mankind were due to them [the gods].  The gods told Prometheus, the representative of mankind, to slay an ox, cut it in half, and use one half of it for all future sacrifices from the humans to the gods.  Prometheus ended up putting all of the good parts of the ox in one half of it and all of the bones in the other; that other half was given to the gods.  When Zeus realized he had been tricked, he set out to punish Prometheus.  The gods then created a woman, Pandora, who would be the ruin of the human race.  After all, what better way to get back at Prometheus than destroying the race that he loved?  Hermes escorted Pandora to the human world, and gave her to a man named Epimetheus, who owned a beautiful box containing all the blessings reserved by the gods for mankind.  This box was strictly off-limits, according to the gods, so when Pandora found out Epimetheus owned it, she desperately wanted to know what things were inside the box.  She raised the lid of the box, and all of the blessings took flight away from mankind.  Thankfully, Pandora closed the lid just in time to save the last blessing:  hope.  Hope is the only thing that remains with mankind through hardship.  (Besides Pandora ruining all of the good things about mankind, Zeus decided it wasn't enough of a punishment for Prometheus.  The titan was chained to a rock and for thirty years had his liver attacked by an eagle every day!  Sounds so pleasant!)

The main "evil" that is pointed out in this story is curiosity.  If it wasn't for Pandora's curiosity, then mankind would not have lost all of its blessings.

If you are like me and enjoy reading the Percy Jackson series (I'm looking at you, Ginny and Sophia and James), then you know exactly what a fatal flaw is.  If you do not read this series (in which case, READ THE SERIES), then the exact definition of a fatal flaw according to Percy Jackson wiki is as follows:  "a mental or physical weakness that demigods, humans, and immortals have. These flaws can often cause the downfall of [a] being."  So there you go!  Anyway, while I was reading the story, all I could really think about was that Pandora's "fatal flaw" is curiosity.  Her curiosity leads to the downfall of not only herself, but the rest of humanity.  It ended up damaging so many lives, because that's just what fatal flaws do.

So, what's my fatal flaw?  It's probably my tendency to get distracted.  Whenever it comes time to knuckle down and study or write a paper, I usually tell myself that I have time to do other things instead.  It's a terrible habit that I'm really trying to break this year so I don't have to do it during college.  That would not be enjoyable.  Anyway, in order to end this evil, I'm doing my homework as soon as I get home this year, including on Fridays.  I'm also self-imposing a TV and internet/tumblr ban during the week. It's going pretty well so far, except I did cave and get on tumblr a couple nights ago.  Oops.  I swear, I'm usually very good about it!  I suppose everyone has their moments of weakness; I'll just have to try not to let it happen again.  Distraction will truly be the death of my work ethic if I don't.

Finally, I have a great animation and picture for this week!  I found them about two months ago from (you guessed it) tumblr, and I think they're absolutely beautiful pieces.  The whole work (both the animation and the final picture) is titled "Pandora" by Johnny Dombrowski.