Lessons for Young People

Although I am 20+ years out of my teens, my memory of those years is still crystal clear. There's a myth among young people that older people, and parents in particular, no longer remember what it's like to be a teen but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Ask any parent about their most vivid memories and you'll invariably hear a lot about the joys and sorrows of their teen years.

So why do young people often feel as if their parents don't understand what they're going through? Because parents have had the benefit of many more years of life experience. The wisdom you gain and the lessons you learn as you move through life put things into a new perspective and the advice that you give and the lessons you try to teach your children are filtered through that gained perspective.

For instance:

• We remember the soul searing pain of lost love - but we know now that tomorrow always comes and as you stack tomorrows on top of one another, slowly the pain fades, life moves on and new loves come our way.
• We remember the all consuming stress of high school - but we know now that nothing compares to the stress of being financially responsible for other human beings and we long for the days when all we had to worry about was passing grades, avoiding bullies, and keeping our wardrobe up to date.
• We remember the frustration of 'others' (parents, teachers, etc) controlling every aspect of our lives - but we know now that those were the freest days of our lives because once we left our parents' homes, we gained new and much less gracious masters like employers, landlords, banks, spouses/significant others and law enforcement officers.

IMPORTANT LIFE TRUTH:

Despite what popular culture and romance novels teach, LOVE is a decision that you make and you are in complete control of who you fall in love with. Attraction and infatuation may be out of your control but love is not. Don't believe me? Take a close look at an unhealthy relationship that someone you know and love is in and you'll see evidence of them talking themselves into loving that person over and over again. You try to talk them out of it, they keep talking themselves into it.

Love is a decision.

• If you are happy, it's because you decided to be happy.
• If you are unhappy, it's because you decided to be unhappy.
• If you are angry, it's because you decided to be angry.
• If you are bitter, it's because you decided to be bitter.
• If you are content, it's because you decided to be content.

Emotions and states of being don't just come along and attach themselves to us - WE adopt them and make them our own. Don't believe me? Go do some mission work in third world countries where the people you're serving literally have NOTHING. No electricity, no running water, no shoes, no grocery stores on the corner to buy food from and no modern conveniences. From our privileged, pampered perspectives, if anyone has reason to be unhappy, it would be these people and yet what you'll find is quite the opposite. Yes their lives are hard and yes they suffer but somehow, in the midst of what we see as unlivable conditions, people find happiness, joy, love and satisfaction. They DECIDE to be happy.

You can't control what happens to you (car accident, illness, victim of crime), you can't control what other people do to you (let you down, break your heart, lie about you) and you can't always control your circumstances (rich, poor, employed, unemployed, homeless) but you can control how you deal with what life throws your way. You can learn and grow from these experiences or you can sink and wallow - it's ALL UP TO YOU.

If you can learn these things now, you'll be way ahead of the game. I know adults who have ripped their lives and their families to shreds because they have never learned that happiness is a decision and that you control who you love. One man left his wife and two children because he 'wasn't happy'. When questioned about why he wasn't happy, his response was "we always have to spend the holidays with her family - never with mine". WOW...really? How about you grow a pair and say to your wife "Honey, we're spending Christmas with my family this year"? Clearly, he was working hard to find reasons to be unhappy. Too bad he didn't work just as hard to find reasons to be happy.

Here's what really happened to that man: he found himself attracted to a pretty woman at work and she found herself attracted to him. They flirted with one another which fanned the flames of their attraction instead of smothering them. They put the commitments they'd made to their spouses and children out of their minds and pursued their own selfish desires instead. As they nursed their attraction into infatuation, they started the process of falling out of love with their spouses so that they could clear the way for a new romance. It was heartbreaking to watch and everyone on the outside could see it, but the two selfish people at the heart of the situation refused to hear the truth and justified their behavior by saying "I can't help who I love". That's a lie...I just watched you do it.

Your life really is what you make it. People don't make you happy or unhappy, you do. People don't make you angry and bitter, you do.

It's all up to you.

We Must Never Forget

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana, 1905

The truth of Santayana's words were brought sharply into focus for me when I read the following two paragraphs located at the beginning of the excellent book "The Road from Home" by David Kherdian:

September 16, 1916 - To the Government of Aleppo.

It was at first communicated to you that the government, by order of the Jemiet, had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey...An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious scruples.

Minister of the Interior TALAAT PASHA

August 22, 1939 - I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity men, women and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race. It is only in this manner that we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?

ADOLF HITLER

The chilling brutality so casually mentioned in those two paragraphs is shocking in and of itself, but Hitler's reliance on the selective human memory to excuse his genocidal order is truly frightening because he was so very right. After all, do you remember the extermination of the Armenians?

It's not enough to simply remember the mistakes of the past. We must also teach them to our children in a way that accurately portrays the true scope of the horror, suffering and loss that they caused so that future generations aren't condemned to repeat the genocidal atrocities that Hitler repeated and that some fanatical groups would just as eagerly carry out today. We must not be persuaded to let evil acts like the slaughter of the Armenians, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 fade out of memory by people who suggest that the kindest thing that we can do for the survivors is keep all reminders of the tragedy out of the public eye or by those who prefer to rationalize or justify these events or by those who believe that the only productive way to move forward is to leave the past behind without reference to it ever again.

If ever we needed an incentive to be faithful teachers of history, surely Adolf Hitler gave it to us on August 22, 1939.

Consider the Legacy your Stories Weave

My Father was a great story teller. He could tell the same story over and over again and because he was so funny, we never got tired listening. In fact, at family gatherings my sister and I would often beg him to tell this story or that one even though we'd heard it a hundred times before. My Mother was a much needed part of the audience because although my Father had a great memory for what happened, he was less clear when it came to when it happened. He dated most of his stories by saying that they happened just "the other day" and my Mother would have to clarify with "the other day in 1972". They were a great team.

Recently we had precious family in from out of town and we eventually found ourselves sitting around the dinner table, telling stories as my Father had once done, but it was not the happy time that it should have been. I sat and listened as people recounted tales of my childhood misdeeds that had been passed down to them. Stories about my colossal laziness, my cheating at board games, and all of the rotten things I had done as a child. At first I was a good sport and laughed along with them, admitting that I was indeed a bad sport and detailing my cheating strategies for "Battleship" but after about fifteen minutes of "and my Mom said you were so lazy that...", I began to wither under the negativity and I eventually excused myself and went upstairs to my room where I cried for half an hour. It was then that I realized why my Father's stories had been so precious. He remembered the very best things about his loved ones and it was only those things that he passed on to the next generation.

I learned a valuable lesson from that experience and although I've always tended toward my Father's style of positive story telling, that day with my family where I was the butt of many a joke made me decide that I would never tell a story that would make any of the people in it feel the way that I had or that earns its laughter at the expense of its characters. The tales that I pass down should lead my listeners to love the people in them as much as I do, to appreciate them for the funny things that they said or did, not to laugh at them because of their all too human failings, especially as children.

Before you tell a story, ask yourself this question; if I were the title character, would I want this story retold?

Mesquite Groves Aquatic Center

We spent the day at Mesquite Groves Aquatic Center and despite the 104 degree heat, a good time was had by all. If you're looking for an inexpensive way to fill a day with fun, sun and water, Mesquite Groves offers a deal that just can't be beat!

Admission is $1 for children 2-17, $2.25 for 18-54 and $1.25 for 55 and over. You can bring in your own food and drinks, lifeguards are everywhere, the facilities are spotless, and the pools are crystal clear.

In addition to the two water slides, there's a massive splash zone that includes two slides, dozens of imagnitive water sprayers and a 752-gallon bucket at the top that fills continuously and then spills over onto the bathers below.

For kids of all ages there's a lazy river where you can float round and round on innertubes and for a not-so lazy ride, there's a water vortex too! For adults and older children there's a lap pool with two 1-meter diving boards.

Our five dollar investment bought us five hours of fun in the sun and a happy Summer memory that will last a lifetime.

Mrs. Miller, I need to show you something...

See that little brown trail running up from the rocks and into my house? Know what that is? That, I learned this morning, is a termite tunnel! And it's not alone.

One of our eagle eyed Landscapers noticed the trail this morning and went the extra mile by going around the whole house checking for more of them and then letting us know that we had a problem.

As God would have it, this gentleman lives just a few streets away and has recently had the same problem so he knew just what to look for. As an added bonus, he was able to put my mind at ease almost immediately by reminding me that as far as termites are concerned, we're still under the Builder's warranty and the treatment will be covered.

What at first seemed like bad news, in the end turned out to be good news. The problem seems to have been caught early AND is under warranty. It seems like such a small thing but it filled me with profound sense of gratitude and I was reminded of Isaiah 52:7:

"How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news..."

Now to call the bug guys.

Altogether Different

As I was writing for my other blog today I used "all together" in a sentence and wondered if I should have used "alltogether" instead or if I was making up a new word. I entered the word into my favorite online dictionary and learned that although I had spelled it incorrectly, "altogether" is in fact a word and it does not mean the same thing as "all together". If you too were in the dark, let me enlighten you:

al·to·geth·er

adv.

1. Entirely; completely; utterly: lost the TV picture altogether; an altogether new approach.

2. With all included or counted; all told: There were altogether 20 people at the dinner.

3. On the whole; with everything considered: Altogether, I'm sorry it happened.

n.

A state of nudity. Often used with the: in the altogether.

---

[Middle English al togeder : al, all; see all + togeder, together; see together.]

Usage Note: Altogether and all together do not mean the same thing. We use all together to indicate that the members of a group perform or undergo an action collectively: The nations stood all together. The prisoners were herded all together. All together is used only in sentences that can be rephrased so that all and together may be separated by other words: The books lay all together in a heap. All the books lay together in a heap.

How cool is that? I feel smarter already, don't you?

California Beach Primer

For those of you who, like me, only get to visit the Ocean once in a blue moon, I’ve put together a helpful little FAQ on a common California beach hazard; Oil!

Here’s the beautiful Manhattan Beach located a stone’s throw from a Chevron refinery. The oil barge off in the distance and the faint smell of petroleum in the air should have made me look at things a bit more closely but I was so hypnotized by the beauty of the ocean that those subtle clues were completely lost on me and I assumed that all of the green, brown and black things scattered across the sand were various types of seaweed and so didn't pay close attention to where I was placing my feet. That was a mistake.

Five minutes into my reverie, as I was trying to shake an uncomfortably large chunk of compacted beach sand off of the bottom of my right foot, I realized that the algae-like seaweed I had been walking on wasn’t seaweed at all, but tar-like blobs of oil! It was stuck to the ball of my foot and starting to creep between my toes. For those of you playing along at home, here’s a picture that will help you differentiate between real seaweed and blobs of oil.

I tried peeling it off but that didn’t work. I used my nail to try to get it off but that didn’t work either and actually spread the mess from my foot to my hand. I tried using sand to scrub it off, I tried walking on asphalt to thin it and rub it off but all that did was spread the mess further and further. I managed to scrape off an inch or two using the curb but that was the best I could do. There was no way this oil was coming off without surfactant intervention so we headed off to CVS for supplies.

If you find yourself in my shoes, or rather, in my bare feet, here’s what you’ll need: A stiff nail brush, good quality dish soap and a scrubby or two. Note: Do NOT use Magic Erasers! They’ll work but since they are micro-abrasives, you’ll be giving yourself a heck of a burn in the process!

Here’s my California Beach Oil Removal Kit:

Apply liberal amounts of Palmolive, a little bit of water and start scrubbing. I bought two scrubbies and killed the first one liberating the bulk of the blob from the bottom of my foot. The second scrubby finished the job on my foot and the nail brush took care of my hands.

The further we got from Manhattan Beach, the less oil we ran into but even on Long Beach we found it. Word to the wise; watch your step!