What are you waiting for Carl? It’s not going to get any easier; it’s not going to become any less frightful. Until you step onto the path that you feel drawn to, you will not find the courage and any other ingredient that your circumstances are requiring from you. So when you’re done with waiting, I will meet you on your tightrope of life, I’ll be waiting for you as long as you will be. It cannot happen without you Carl.
- The UNIVERSE -
This may be a strange way to start the blog (and this may sound even stranger), but each morning I receive an email message like this from the universe. Of course you can substitute the word universe with god, source, mother nature, etc. Some days the messages are less fitting than others. But more often than not, something in the electronically generated passage goes deep within me.
This is why I gave up reading the news, memorizing sports statistics and engaging in gossip. If we have such limited amounts of room in the brain, I now choose to fill the storage locker of my mind with lessons for growth. I still get frustrated when friends and family reply with the "I'm soooo busy" excuse (and I'm guilty too, just more aware of it today). Yet we can find ample amounts of time in the same 24 hour day to view greedy corporate advertisements disguising themselves as entertainment.
I should be staying busy studying for a test to help me begin a new career. But I couldn't look away from a documentary I caught on Netflix last night:
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Starsuckers/70126825?trkid=8133737
I don't know if the link will get you there without a subscription, so here's the IMDB and Wikipedia pages:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1510934/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starsuckers
"To be creative, just show up at the canvas, the paper. Pick up the paintbrush, the pencil. Begin."
-Annie Zalezsak
And I can recall with great clarity the words of Steve Chandler in his book "100 Ways to Motivate Yourself." He simply stated, "the starting IS the doing."
So I begin. Finally stepping off the practice platform of negotiation, I'm embarking feet first in a career teaching young people. In a few weeks time I will take the CBEST. This is a state government mandated test to measure my abilities in math, reading and writing. I will be interviewed by the local school district administration, and later the school board will decide if I may be entrusted in the precious handling of our greatest assets.
I tend to avoid using the term children because labels only further separate me from them. Although I may be larger in size and have lived on this planet longer, I am in no way superior to the young. In these mindful efforts I will begin to make a difference: one student at a time If I must.
One of the shocking items I discovered while watching the aforementioned documentary "Starsuckers" involved the amount of time students use daily on electronic media. It was observed that kids spend three times the amount of hours engaging in electronic devices (mostly for the purposes of entertainment) than in total time spent at school!
How often have we complained in an inquiring fashion, "what's wrong with kids today?" But I ask you to peel the onion back a little further than that. Who is it that sells, manufacturers and advertises these devices? Who makes the pornographically violent movies? And the drug companies administering mind altering substances to increase attention- who runs those?
Adults are responsible for all these. And it's a sad commentary on society today, but nonetheless appropriate: we do in fact eat our young. Greed for money, fame and power drives our insatiable appetite to devour the energy of the youth and fatten our grown up wallets.
So instead, I ask you, "what's wrong with adults these days?"
Put down the remote control, e-tablet and earbuds and sit quietly with me while we ignore what corporations tell us is important.
I'll be waiting for you on my meditation cushion.
We can begin together,
Carl
