Personality and Following Your Dreams

Dear Marge:

...You remember how I felt when you took this position. Two years tops. I said that because an extended stay in an entry level position means that your pay relatively decreases over the years, and too often also, so does your satisfaction with the position. Periodic change, is how you grow. Be true to these life realities, and you will be happy.

As you say, you will probably always be kinda slow to act--that's a part of your personality. But slowness does not preclude success or the exercise of your wisdom. Just do what you have to do when you have to do it.

Let me offer you something else. You may not realize this right now, but presently [as a single adult] you are in the most flexible and exploitable stage of life that you will ever know. I want for you that you flex your creativity and exploit your uniqueness. You were excited about a particular industry when you started this job. I think it's time to follow that dream.

Because you are having a not-so-easy time switching jobs after interviewing over the years, consider that you might be looking in the wrong places. When you get excited about something, you inspire people. Dust off your dreams, get excited and do nothing except what moves you in that direction. Don't buy real estate, don't look for a man, don't look for another boring job. Don't' sign up for another event or buy any more clothes that advance the same old holding pattern. Move in the direction that excites you. ...NOW.

It is important to see the value in this concept. Sometimes, people get attached to routines and mislabel the routine as God's peace. Instead, there is a fire inside you, that yearns to have its way. Your fire is what makes you the unique pleasure to God that you are. However, some discredit really seeing and knowing oneself this way. Perhaps they think that only a few get to experience a life of excitement and passion and purposefulness. May we know the BIG happy God in heaven, and get a true glimpse of what we should be like.

Only one more something else. More than anyone, we should know that the life of a man passes quickly. We are but a breath, it says in Isaiah. Despite this, we allow an experience of life wrought with insignificant activity. Instead of making joyful noises to the Lord, we credit more the noises we render as sacrifices than the noises we make while we are happy. On this day, September 21, 2006, you should commence your plodding to the place in life you were created to occupy. Go as slow as you want, but do nothing else!

Protecting Our Children

The children of our nation are under siege! In the span of a decade across this nation, we watched one elected official after another seduce the youth with whom they were charged. In the span of a year across this nation, we chronicled the pandemic of child sexual predators. In the span of a week across this nation, we watched in horror as five schools were either invaded by gunmen or threatened with the same. Upon the recent report of one more predator, how is it that our watchdogs (albeit self-proclaimed), rant on single-mindedly about political ramifications?

It's unreasonable that each attack against our children spawns a political debate.The threats to children today are untenable--beyond sexual predators. They are threatened by neglect, divestment of family, epidemic health maladies, abduction and murder.

We work hard for the security of our families. But security is just one of our priorities. It certainly helps to live a long life, but we want more for our offspring. We want for them health, prosperity, joy, and productivity. These are less likely to actualize if we are forced to raise them in a cocoon.

In a better day and time, people will properly discern the fool and the scoundrel from the noble man. It won't be like it is now. Today, men stand up to deceive a nation with the crumbs of mischief still on their face. And those who chase after them dole out shallow justice and confer seats in public office. Former congressman Mark Foley is only a recently publicized example of how life and dignity are being confiscated from U.S. children en masse.

To be sleepy or politically correct in the face of blatant attacks on the welfare of our families is to undermine every good hour that we labor. And to consider that any such attack has partisan origins is deception. Noble men of noble deeds will come forth if we refuse to settle for fools and scoundrels.