Shining Thru

I think it’s interesting that people throw a fit over how much violence is in the movies that kids watch today, but they never seem to worry about anything else.  I think that we should be more worried about not that kids might watch aliens or fighting with light sabers, but that they are being desensitized to much more realistic things in our every day society, like responsibility or hard work.  Today more kids than not are not held accountable for their own actions, and they do not realize that things that you get in this life need to be worked for.  I cannot believe how many teenagers and even younger kids that are angry with their parents because they didn’t get the latest IPhone, or whatever they are looking for.  Even though they still have nicer clothes, phones, and sometimes cars that I do and I have a job.  Many children these days don’t know what it’s like to have to work for anything.

I think that our society is worried about desensitizing our children to the wrong things.  I know there is the occasional crazy kid who thinks that the big battles on Star Wars are real, but I think for the most part kids only have healthy imagination and don’t actually feel the need to kill anyone after seeing a movie or playing a video game.  I do however think that we are doing our children a huge disservice by sheltering them from the realities of the real world and giving them more chances than anyone will give them as an adult.  Kids today get to go to summer school, or protest their grade, or have their parents protest their grades, or do online make up credits, all sorts of things, simply because they didn’t feel like doing the work the first time around and failed.  I don’t understand why we keep giving chances like this to children, it would be different if they were actually trying and just didn’t get it, but the ones I know will tell you out right that they simply didn’t feel like it.  Too many young people think that the world will bend to their whims and desires…it’s kind of scary when you think about a future of an entire generation that will be shocked when the realities of adulthood hit them…if they hit them….they might just keep going not understanding why things aren’t working out or letting their parents and grandparents continue to shelter them and do all of the work for them.

Sometimes unforeseen things come our way

Casting plans aside, insisting on instant attention

Sometimes a person, accident, storm, anything

Sometimes they are positive things that we want to spare the time for

Sometimes Not

A great chance at something wonderful

Butterflies, Rainbows and Waterfalls

All coming at you in an instant

Beauty and Fear, New things and Old

All unforeseen in the future of your life

Why do people worry about what is in the past when there is no way to change it?  Why try to change something that is unchangeable?  Regret serves no purpose.  Instead of spending all of the time regretting the past, I wish more people would simply examine the past with an open mind and learn from it to make the future better.  Why try to undo what is already done while the future is still undecided.  The future can still be changed.  The future still hangs in the balance.  People are spending all of their time regretting the past and that only leads to not paying enough attention to the present or where things will go from where, which leads to more regrets.

I feel bad for people that live in the past instead of the present.  Although there are some people who don’t consider the present enough because they are so focused on the future…it’s like they fail to realize that we can’t get to the future without the present and that all of the choices we make now are the choices to keep them on the path to the future they want.  I know we don’t have complete control over anything like that…but why worry about what’s not right here???

The wind blows gently along the tops of the trees

Like a whisper in the ear, it gently passes not leaving a trace

Simply an impression

You wonder if it’s real, if it really happened

Did you just imagine or is it revealed?

Thinking too hard about what you can’t prove

What you can’t be sure of…

The hidden untruths

Lie deep within the unread rules

The gaps between the lines that you can’t write on

Something that is there but unseen

So many things in life

So many unseen futures

No where to turn where there isn’t a reckoning

It doesn’t matter if the glass is half full if it never comes off the shelf

Leave the things you know to yourself

Or fight through all of the unrecoverable facts

Thinking, breathing, living

What will the future hold?  What will the world be like?  Will it be like the Science Fiction books, or the cartoons and movies that have been so popular?  Or will it be the opposite, some big disaster sending us all back to the stone age? 

It’s pretty interesting when you look at all of the different views of the future that people have imagined.  It seems as though people have tried to imagine or even predict the future for as long as I know of.  There have been books written like 1984 because the author thought that is what the world would be like 50 years from the time of the Nazis that he was growing up in.  A time when everyone was afraid that everywhere would be taken over and controlled.  Movies are made every year it seems with a new vision of the future, from the Jetsons, The Fifth Element, etc….People love to imagine what we don’t know about the future.

I have to wonder if people try to imagine the future because it’s exciting, or because they are scared?  do they really want to know or do they just hate not knowing?  What is it about the future that draws our imaginations in?  It’s the same quality as outer space, the unknown that we want to explore, or love to imagine because the possibilities are endless.

The future is another unknown element that just can’t be ignored.  Imaginations running wild, going through the endless possibilities.

New and exciting Ride

New People New Faces Everywhere

Bumping Laughing Talking

A new year begins

New experiences await

The excitement of anticipation is there

Waiting to see what will come

Hoping for the best

Not thinking about the worse

Knowing you have something to hope for is enough.

“Forget Regret, or Life is yours to Miss.”  I really like this line from the musical Rent.  I think it says a lot about how we should all live our life.  I know that I have gotten caught up in personal guilt, worry, regret, and wondering “what if”….We don’t have time for all of that.  We have right now, and right now is a result of everything that has happened in the past yes, but how we live right now is what makes up the future so why screw up the future by worrying about what you did in the past….it’s in the past, this is now, this is what we need to concentrate on. 

No one ever guaranteed us tomorrow…..so we can’t worry about what will happen in the future, just as we can’t worry about the past…if we spend our whole life worrying, we’re not living.  Let yesterday be, because it’s in the past, and take care of tomorrow when it’s today.  No need to worry about tomorrow when you need to live today, you need to make decisions today…yes those decisions may affect the rest of your life, but if we spend so much time worrying about the consequences of one decision, we’ll miss out on the opportunity all together. 

In an effort to not think about the situation that we are in some people avoid thinking too deeply by living in the past,  walking down memory lane all of the time, or dive into one aspect of their life like work or a hobby…just to avoid thinking about whatever thing they don’t want to acknowledge fully in their life…most of us have something. 

Living in the moment seems like a simply theory, a great way to live…but we all know there is more to it than that.  I wish it was that easy.  Unfortunately most of us are aware that our life is linked to many other lives and that our decisions have an affect on all of those people.  It’s also true that sometimes we can’t control the “what ifs” that go through our minds.  But we can control how much time we dwell on these things…sometimes we need to look ahead or remember the past, but we can’t forget to live the right now, right here….

I hate it when you seem to care more about someone’s well being than they do.  When you end up stressed out because another person is failing at something or even at life…not really living…just existing, and yet they only whine, complain, try to get by on their looks or charm or money, and you’re the one trying to help them sort it out, while they sit back and do nothing.  You can only take this for so long, before you get tempted to throw your hands up and be done with the situation and the person….but they you are called a bad friend, or told that you are the reason that they are failing.

I wish people would take responsibility for their own choices, actions, or lack there of….If you do nothing to help yourself, wishes and prayers can only get you so far.  I heard once, “God can give you the canoe, but sometimes you need to paddle yourself, the current will only take you so far.  I think that’s very true in life, you can’t keep hoping for a new job, smaller pant size, a relationship, and continue to whine when you don’t get it if you’re not actively trying to get these things.  I wish we could just make a wish on a star and POOF it’s there in the morning…last I tried, it doesn’t work.  A wish and a prayer will get you nothing but empty dreams.

In order for our society to succeed, we need to teach the younger generation the qualities of respect and responsibility that we have somewhere lost along the way.  If we do not instill a work ethic and an idea of being responsible for yourself, our society is going to keep falling further and further into debt.  With a generation that is growing up in a world without consequences and rules, we will really be hurting when they are the ones in control and have no way of knowing how to establish order to their own lives much less, companies, communities, or government; we will be living in chaos.