The Beauty of Change

It seems that the older we get, the more resistant to change we become.  When we are children, we adapt more easily to it because we are almost always focused on the positive things that can come about as a result of change.  As we grow older, our experiences make us more cautious, and less likely to embrace change.  While change is a scary thing for many, it can be a beautiful thing.  In fact, change is inevitable in nature, and we are in awe of its beauty (most of the time)!

In fact, change must occur in the world's ecological system to renew it.  Fall comes in late September each year, and turns the leaves red, yellow, orange, and brown.  Those leaves eventually fall to the earth, leaving many tree branches barren of their typical beauty, and will even make the most manicured yards look amazingly different during this time.  This change carries on through winter and then into spring, where we see the budding of green leaves on those same trees, which make their way to the surface to restore them to their previous glory.  Life is much more evident in nature during the summer, as we see more wildlife come out from hibernation and scamper about as if they are reveling in the change of the landscape. 

Change is important to life in order to live it to its fullest.  We will make mistakes, some of them can bring about major setbacks.  But by pushing forward to help bring about change that is good, will always be successful, if people band together for that good.  Life without change would be dull and not worth living....so don't be afraid of it.  Embrace it!

The children are our future

When I was child, my parents pushed me always to be the best and most productive person that I could be. They encouraged me to get a good education. They taught me the value of a dollar. I learned that success came from hard work and the proper application of education and skills that I acquired through formal education and life lessons. While I did have a social life, my parents played a major role in the choices I made when it came to hanging out with certain groups and/or engaging in certain activities. My parents believed in supporting me and they also believed in solid and quality family time being spent with the children.

I believe that the foundation that my parents gave me afforded me the opportunity to grow up strong and with sound morals and values. And even though life can sometimes throw me major curve balls, my goal is to still hit them all out of the park! Being the mother of a teenage daughter, I am exposed a lot to other teenagers and I see the stark differences in the way I was raised, versus how a lot of them (not all of them) are being raised now. They are exposed to way too much inappropriate material by way of the television and radios. Parents sometimes take a less active role in helping them make good choices about who to hang out with and what functions to attend. Where I had to be inside my house before the street lights came on, I see children now of all ages being allowed to stay out til the wee hours of the morning. Left to their own vices, and to make adult choices with immature minds. I often hear parents complain about the task they are faced with in raising children. They say they are uncontrollable, stubborn, lazy, and sassy. When I ask these parents how much time they take up with their children, they say, they have to work long hours, or really can't afford to do much with them.

As a result, more and more children are making bad decisions. They are losing their desire to have more, to be better, stronger than the generation that came before them. Instead, they are regressing. They are backtracking and falling in those societal traps that are meant to imprison them mentally and eventually physically. They are becoming more violent, and have less respect for their bodies and their minds than ever before. It's alarming to see that children have such a different mindset than I did growing up. What's even more scary is that these are the people who will run the world when we are too old to do so. Answer these questions for in your mind:

Can you imagine what kinds of decisions that some of them will make as leaders?
How many of them will actually break from the bad habits they developed when growing up being mostly unattended?
Are you confident that the young people around you have a good chance of growing up to be responsible, caring, open-minded and positively driven to want to and put action behind changing the world for the better?
Are you sure they won't make it worse for you? When is the last time you asked a teenager what they wanted to be when they grew up? Did you ask them how they were going to accomplish their goal?
If your answers to these questions alarm you, then why don't you take some action too?

Try mentoring a child? Help to expose a them to something great that they wouldn't otherwise be. It doesn't have to be expensive, and it's very possible that you will be exposed to something that will change your life too! We must remember that we are taking care of our futures too, when we make sure that the children can see one. By preserving their quality of life, we preserve our own.

Everyone needs a good support system

Sometimes, people get angry and say, "I don't need you!"  And out of that anger, they sometimes push away someone that could really help them get to where they want to be in this life.  We sometimes say those words to a dear friend or family member, and because of our own selfishness, we lose the opportunity to reconcile with them, and cherish with them the last great moments that either they or we have on this precious earth.

Who are we to think that we need no one?  Who are we to believe that we can make in this world without asking someone for a favor, even if it's a stranger, and even worse, believe that we can get all that we want out of life without being of assistance to someone else. So many of us profess being Christians and doing our best to live by the example that Jesus set for us, but even Jesus couldn't fulfill all the tasks that our father laid out before him alone.  He needed 12 disciples to help him to get the job done.  Sure, he did do the biggest task on his own, which was to give his life so that we could have an everlasting one, but in Jesus' 32 short years on this earth, he was surely not going to be able to spread the gospel all over the world to the people present during his time, and most definitely, the task would have been impossible after life was removed from his physical body!

The same is true today.  Most of us wanted to do something special when we were children (and many of us still do as adults).  But without a good support system, its really almost impossible to accomplish a great feat.  Take Henry Ford for example, he had less than a sixth grade education, but he was able to revolutionize the automobile industry, and the foundation that he laid, still exists today in Ford Motor Company.  He didn't do it alone either!  He went out and found people who were more educated than he, and motivated them to get to work on his dream!  The same is true for Thomas Edison, who used a think tank to perfect many of his inventions.  When the founding fathers of the United States decided to become an independent nation, they called on regular citizens from the 13 colonies to hold back the British Army, and even though they were not skilled in the art of warfare, they defeated them and became an independent nation.  And there are countless others, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, and Mother Teresa, just to name a few- who found people who believed in what they were trying to do enough to encourage them and even join them in their quest to accomplish great things.  

Your support system doesn't have to be just family, it can be friends, co-workers, and even strangers who believe enough in what you may be trying to do, that will want to encourage you, offer ideas, and in the best case join you!  The best thing is that you can seek out people in the same way, find out what they are passionate about and share your passion with them if you feel the same way about it.  Two heads are always better than one.  I encourage you to get started on that great feat that is rambling around inside of you, and keep searching until you find the people that will stand by you until you finish it!  You will be so happy that you did, and even happier to lend the same level of support to them!