Their Words for Our Lives...

Is there someone in your life who trusts you? Someone that comes to you, talks to you about their problems, about their successes, and looks to you for encouragement and comfort?

If you'd like to change that, the process is simple. Make them think you're interested, and then prove to them that you could hardly give a crap. If they tell you that they're one step closer to achieving their goals and dreams, think up as many ways as you can to tell them why it's not a good idea. Tell them they should do something else. Something more practical. Something that isn't so unlikely.

How many dreams have been crushed this way? More than I dare to count. So often, I hear friends or coworkers tell me that they'd love to do such-and-such a thing, whether it's sing, or be a zoologist, or dance, or any other array of potential careers, but their parents want them to do something else. Their friends are telling them that it's not going to work.

I have some information for all of you reading out there.

If a parent is telling you that you can't achieve your dreams, or that you should give up on your goals, they've got this parenting thing wrong. And if a friend is telling you that it's not going to work, someone needs new friends. Drop that jealous Debbie-downer, and find someone who will support your dreams and aspirations, through thick and thin.

Are we going to raise the next generation to be satisfied with what is practical? To settle for what they consider to be second or third best? To spend the rest of their lives do a job they may hate for the sake of a big house and a nice car?

How about we show some pride in our children. The words "I'm proud of you" mean nothing, nothing, if you don't demonstrate it some more substantial way. Trust me when I say, kids know when you're saying things just to say them.

He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.
-- John Lennon

We've got to be genuinely interested in the successes of others, if we think to call ourselves their friends or family.

Take some time to get to know people and what their dreams are. Ask people what's troubling them, and how you can help. Maybe what they're aiming for isn't something so ambitious as President, or CEO of a major company, or galactic overlord, but here's the truth of it:

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. --Voltaire

If you can inspire in someone the spark they need to accomplish what they long for, to be as great as they dream of being, not only will you feel a grand sense of accomplishment on their behalf when that challenge is conquered, but you will likely also have made a lifelong friend.

Lend someone your heart to help them fill the hole in theirs, and you'll find yourself with twice the heart you began with.




This post is related to my Twenty Years From Now post...

http://nourishingbrainfood.blogspot.com/2011/02/twenty-years-from-now.html

... but it comes from a bit of an angry place, and it looks at the situation from a different point of view. I'll be back later with another post on something new. Thanks again for reading!