There is Good
"Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive."-- Elbert HubbardI know, I know it looks bad. The world seems not so pretty at the moment. Especially after all this commotion in the government.So how do we believe again that people are still good? I'm not sure actually. I'm not sure how to articulate this without sounding like an asshole.I know this to be true: People are not inherently bad, they do bad things as a response to fear. Look I've been through enough myself and I have seen darkness that I thought would never go away. But eventually, it does get better. If you are in a place where it seems like it can't get better, wait. This too shall pass.Everything changes, that is the only guarantee in life. Change. Think about how much better our lives are since we found the cure to the plague and ended slavery and stopped Hitler. Things are actually better than they were hundreds of years ago, even though they seem pretty bad.Women were property not long ago and beating or raping a woman was not considered a crime. Especially if she was your wife. Being a homosexual was considered a mental illness and interracial marriage was illegal. I mean people were monsters.At least now we pretend we are not animals that live in a world of the survival of the fittest. There was a time that if you had a disability you were spat on in society and if you had a physical 'deformity' you were put in a freak show in the circus. This is what we came from.I know it's not all rainbows and sunshine now. I mean it can get pretty ugly from where I'm standing. However, we are more conscious of how nasty our world is. There are those who are trying to fight it. Maybe you are one of those people.There are more of us than there are of them. When I say 'us' I mean those who believe that peace and love are the true human values. Those of us who hate war and are concerned about human rights violations. Most of us want all of us to stop screwing with the environment. Notice that mother earth seems like she's getting mad at us. Do you blame her?
Do you remember when you were a child? How simple things once were. Remember just spending most of your time playing? I want to play again. I want my goal in life to be having fun. That's what kids do, they just enjoy life. While adults are policing them and each other, children are laughing away their lives.How do we get back to that simplicity? That pureness? The only thing that usually messes kids up is adults. We don't respect the fact that they are so close to their natural spirit. We try to teach it out of them and beat it out of them. We show them how ugly the world is, that they have no right to be happy. And by the time they are adults, they have bought into this. Most of us will never unlearn this.I have been teaching kids that are younger than my usual students recently and the thing I notice the most is how easy it is to get them to smile. You can't always do that to an adult. A real smile, not a 'hey how are you doing today' type of smile, but a heartfelt agreement that happiness exists. It's even easier to make them laugh. Kids are waiting to have an adult laugh with them so they don't think they are crazy for thinking that life is good.When I was a kid, every day after school my best friend and I would go into her basement and sing and dance to Madonna tunes. We did this for hours and days. I was watching this thing on Oprah the other day, a woman was talking about how we parent all wrong. That we don't accept the spirit of the child. My father happened to be listening in on this show as well, and afterward, he said to me, "You know that woman you were watching the other day? She was completely wrong. And her thirteen-year-old daughter, she is going to end up flipping burgers for the rest of her life. Kids need direction in life."Wow, I thought. He really didn't like the idea that we should respect the direction of a child's spirit. Adults are afraid that if they leave children to their own devices they will end up miserable, uneducated and poor. My parents to this day think this 'writing thing' is a mistake. That I should have become a corporate lawyer who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars by slaving twenty-four-hours a day at a job I hate.Yes, I would like to make more money, but I would not give up what I love for that life. Maybe I'll make more money selling books, who knows. I'm willing to take that chance. Teachers and professors don't make a hell of a lot of money, but we are doing something that makes a difference to us. We are actually creating society, teaching people how to think.Are you happy? What would it take for you to be happy? Ask yourself this often.That same woman on Oprah said that we have to teach our children that the point of life is not just happiness, it's living everything, the good, the bad and the ugly, fully. Fully feeling and being in our lives at every moment on every level. Experiencing everything.You'll notice something. There is nothing that can make you happy. Happiness is a decision. Once you decide to be happy, you start doing things that happy people do. Happiness is the only thing that creates happiness. We have the paradigm all wrong, we think, when I lose weight I will be happy. But the truth is, I can't lose weight until I'm happy.The difference between kids and adults is that adults talk about happiness, while kids are happy. We don't learn anything from children because we are too busy thinking they need to learn from us."Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."-- Guillaume ApollinaireHappiness, like misery, loves company. It's contagious. If you really want to be happy, stop hanging around negative people and find some seriously happy folks to be with. And then say to yourselves what me and my best friend say to each other regularly, "You know what we need up in this joint? Some hilarity!"You want to hear something funny? I started to think that my website address is too long and complicated so I should shorten it and make it easy for my readers to find me. So I thought maybe I should try nina.com. I looked up nina.com and I found out it's an adult only website. I'm not going to fight with a porn star named nina for her website address. I'm not exactly interested in catering to her crowd either.That kind of made me laugh, it's the little things in life that should put a smile on your face. I hope this doesn't sound like pop-psychology psycho-babble. Let's face it, it kind of is that. However, I have found that self-help books and ideas that are promoted on talk shows are sometimes of value to me.So this is my two cents about, I don't know, goodness, happiness. That's all we all really want, isn't it?“ The Paradoxical Commandments People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.Love them anyway.If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.Do good anyway.If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.Succeed anyway.The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway.Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.Be honest and frank anyway.The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.Think big anyway.People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.Fight for a few underdogs anyway.What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.Build anyway.People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.Help people anyway.Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.Give the world the best you have anyway.”― The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Councilnina