Journal Entry 60: Symbols

            Symbols surround us today. Our lives are full of symbols, from big one to small ones, from obvious ones to hard to tell ones. A symbol is a thing or object that represent of stands for something. For example, the symbols for McDonald's is a really big yellow M. So when you see a really big yellow M you know it is McDonald's. Or another example is when you see a girl and a boy standing together, you know it means the bathroom. There are also a lot of symbols in books and stories. For example, in the book called Animal Farm, each animal symbolizes different kinds of people or country. I think these things are acquired a cultural agreed upon meaning because it is widely used. Wherever you go, shopping malls, restaurants, museum or any public place, they use the girl and the boy standing together as the symbol of bathroom. Once you learned that, whenever you see the symbol, you know it means the bathroom. Something like this happens when it is very widely used. I think symbols are created "naturally". People don't go around and draw symbols and show it to people and tell them that it is a symbol of something. It natural develops and before you know it, the world is using it. But I think some symbols are created by will. For example, the facebook symbol. It is created by will. There are many symbols in my life.