My World, My Voice

I'm very dismayed today about the state of the world. People change lanes in traffic without using their turn signals. A Muslim raised pop star is spit on and called a whore and her life is threatened because she shows her face and belly when she performs. Young women are looked on as property as they are trafficked over the Mexican/American border and their bodies sold to men for sexual acts and torture. Our children are targeted online and preyed upon by perverts and child molesters, sometimes even being abducted and physically abused and murdered. A man goes within himself and chooses a different religion than he was born into and his peers seek his death. A French labor law is sought to be changed and so protesters take to the streets hurling rocks at authorities and setting cars on fire. ...And then in line at the grocery store today a woman was 47 cents short and another person in line gave her the money so that she would not have to put anything back. Can't we all...

When we put aside the truths we hold close, sometimes the same truths come back and are reaffirmed to us. Sometimes it opens the door for something entirely different to enter and in that moment we grow as a human being . We all come at life with our own baggage. That baggage is the sum total of all our experiences to date. It's what gives us wisdom, what guides us when we are unsure, what creates the framework for our values and our beliefs. When something presents itself for us to act on, our past experiences guide us to make a decision about this new thing. Sometimes that decision achieves that which we set out to achieve and sometimes it does not. Almost in all cases however, the decision that we made at that moment was one that we judged as the "right" one based on the experience and baggage of our past. Our goal then is not to judge things as right or wrong, because that is merely opinion based on previous experience. But to be willing to lay down our baggage ...

William Shakespeare said it best, "To thine own self be true." What this means to me is that we must each walk our own path and we must each make our own decisions in life. Just like a flame in a fire, create your own destiny, dance your own dance, be your own self. So many times in this world people make decisions based on the truth of others. This is shown on every level from what you choose to eat to how our nations get along with one another. I have an aunt who didn't like peas or beans and at her house, she never ate or served those vegetables. Interestingly enough none of her children like peas or beans either. Do they not like these vegetables because they tried them and truly think they are awful or did they just take the experience of their mother and make it their own? A General tells his soldier that the other nation is their enemy. The soldier goes into battle and kills the soldier of the other nation. Was that person who died truly an enemy of our nat...