RACISM : Will It Ever Die?

I was looking through some articles on internet pertaining to the start up of the NFL season, and the debacle that has flared up again over Brett Favre's return to the game he can't leave. I came across an article written by Jason Whitlock (Fox Sports) titled Is There a Racial Double-standard for Favre? ( article is here) Now the issue of Favre is NOT the focus of my column today. The question in the title of his article came to him from a Los Angeles reader named Gary Taylor which read as follows:

“Would Brett be getting this kind of love if he was a black QB? Hell no!. The media would have called him everything, including the so-called N-word. Your thoughts, JW? I hope he loses every game he plays in. How disrespectful can Minnesota be to the other two QBs on the team.”

This comment is exactly what keeps racism alive! Michael Vick is a Black QB and he received more than fair treatment, and he committed a Federal Crime. Pacman Jones is a Black athlete who had been arrested about 13 times, and still was given opportunities...and I could list about 30 other Black men who have been in high profile situations and have been treated more than fairly.

Jason went on to write that the same day he received an email from his high school, best friend, Willie that read:

“I hate to say this, but if Favre was black, would he be a bad teammate?”

Again, I say...What the HECK does it matter what color he is. His team wants him back because he is a three time MVP, holds almost every single record for a QB in the NFL, and is approaching 70,000 career passing yards. He also had one of the best statistical seasons of his entire 19 year career last year, and led his team to the NFC championship game. Had it not been for 6 fumbles, and an interception, they would have made it to  the Superbowl. So you really think the team cares what color his skin is? He could be purple for all they care...they just want the best chance to win.Again I say...DUMB, racist question from someone looking to keep racism alive.

I have to say that Jason did an OUTSTANDING job handling the question. He was objective and put it out there straight forward. I enjoyed the article...but the bigger issue that struck me is this...Will racism ever die? 

Ask yourself this question...Had slavery never existed int he first place, what would the world be like?

There would still have been people who disliked other people for one reason or another. And, unfortunately, physical appearance is a major cause of dislike in this country weather it's based on the color of your skin, your smell, your look, your car, your house, or your body type. Sometimes, an overweight person may resent a slender person. A short person may dislike taller people for the same reasons, hence the Napoleon complex. People who are considered "non-attractive", may dislike an "attractive" person...ignorant people may dislike smart people. Maybe its from envy, or maybe they are just mad at the world...who knows.You get the idea.

The bottom line is that our society says that it wants racism to be gone, but they hold onto it for every single reason that  they should be doing away with it all together. Everything seems to boil down to Black and White. Don't get me wrong...there are still some truly racists people in the world. There are plenty of opinions on the subject, as I am sure you know, but it seems that the people claiming racial oppression are the very one's being the racist.

I am white...and I have never owned anyone, regardless of their color. I know a ton of racist black guys who have never been a slave, or been forced to do anything against their will for that matter, but they are still mad at me because my great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather may or may not have owned a slave. Personally, I am not racist in the slightest way. I have many friends of all sorts of races, and I love them all. I dislike ignorance without bias based on color. If you are an idiot, White,Black,Chinese or whatever, who judges someone based on the color of their skin, you are a racist, but that doesn't mean that all those who share their skin color are to be categorized together. All white people don't belong to the KKK, all black people are not members of the Black Panthers, and all Muslims are not terrorists.

True racists exist and they always will, but until we can let go of the past and move forward as a society, racism as a culture will never go away. There are so many people who hold onto the days of their ancestors. They have been taught by their parents, and their grandparents, that these "people of another color" are bad and to be treated poorly. They are less human in some absurd way. They don't realize that their very teaching is what keeps racism alive. Their hatred filters down, generation to generation, and keeps the fire burning. The fact is, society is full of all sorts of people, and in the grand scheme of the population, there are a minimal number of true racists in the mix, comparatively speaking...the message in this is that a few burning embers should not a fire make.

How can we, as a country or society, ever get past the boundaries of racism, when we still treat it as if it is a part of our every day lives? It is the excuse that racist people won't let go of because they need it. How else can they explain why they are in poverty? Why they can't get a job? Why they are always in jail? Everything goes back to racism. I don't have a job, and haven't had one in almost two years, but I can tell you it doesn't have a thing to do with racism, or because we have a Black President. It is because of the economic state of our country. I see people as people, not as colors, and if everyone else would do the same, racism would be so minimal that it would only be noticed by a select few, and could be ignored with purpose.

WAKE UP WORLD. Stop making it about Black and White, and start taking responsibility for your actions. If you think you are a victim, then you will be. If you think you are oppressed because of slavery from 145 years ago, then you are a slave to your own ignorance. In today's world, the opportunities are limitless, and if you are in poverty, jobless, have 6 kids, on welfare, discriminated against, or WHATEVER, quit using your race or your family tree as an excuse...REGARDLESS OF YOUR COLOR.

White, Black, Arabian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, or Sasquatch...get educated, try to make your life better, and get off the pity party. As long as you take the issue back to racism, racism will still be here. It is entirely in our hands. We control whether it exists, so if you say you want it gone, then you have to take the first steps to eliminate it by teaching your children to love people for who they are on the inside. You have to accept that life is yours for the taking, and stop letting life's circumstances force you into "excuse mode".

Weather or not a person is black or white shouldn't matter how he/she gets treated, but until we decide to start treating people like people instead of colors, it WILL matter. The question then, is this...if we don't change our attitudes, what will change racism in our culture? If we don't stop making it about race, how will racism die?

Think about it.

To Believe or Not To Believe

I run into people all the time that say they believe in a God, but don't practice any specific organized religion. I ask them how that works, and they always look at me with confusion. "How what works?" they say. I ask them who this God they believe in is? What is he like? What is he capable of? What does he expect? What happens if you don't at least try to fulfill his expectations, much less actually fulfilling them? Does he get angry?

By the time we get to this part, they always say the same thing..."well, I'm not sure, but I guess I think that if you are a good person, and live a good life, you go to heaven. If you are a bad person, you go to hell". My next question is also always the same. "So you believe int he Bible then?". There is a conglomeration of responses to this question, depending on the person, but most people say, in no specific terms, that they do not believe in the Bible.

"How then do you know about Heaven and Hell?"...their frustration starts to rear it's head. "How do you know what living good or bad is...Isn't that just subjective to your own personal interpretation?"...they start to look around and avoiding eye contact. Most will stop the conversation there, but a few, those who really like the competitive nature in a battle of wits, will continue with certainty that they have it figured out.

The point is that if you say you believe in God, shouldn't you act like it? Without Jesus Christ, we would have no idea what God was like, or what he actually wants from us. Jesus showed us what that burning sensation to do good, to love, and to be kind that is in each and every one of us is all about. It is not enough to live a good life and hope that you did just enough to get into Heaven. If we take what  the Bible tells us about Heaven and Hell, we should take he whole Bible as the truth. We should consider that if we are not living for God, we are living for the Devil.

How do those people, who say they believe there is a God but don't believe in a religion, know God at all? They are living life with no idea of what it will take to get to the everlasting life of eternity. They are dooming themselves without even blinking an eye or lifting a finger. We do more to research the TV we will soon buy, than we research the chance to get to Heaven and avoid Hell. Those who say that living good is enough, are fooling themselves into beleiving that they can live selfishly there entire lives, and never do anything for God, but that HE will do for them.

So many people say, "well I prayed about it for months, but God never helped me".....what a joke. If you do nothing for God, how can you constantly expect him to do for you?

If you want to hold onto those material desires and selfish ways, then you better lower your expectations of God. If you say you believe in Him, you better learn to act like it. If Heaven and Hell are real, then isn't it worth some research into yourself, your heart, your mind, and your soul to figure out if you are doing all you can to get to Heaven, and not just enough to slip in?

One day, and I believe this day is on our doorstep if you look at the state of natural disasters that are occuring everyday, Jesus will come back to this place. The Heavens will open to the sounds of trumpets. Jesus and his saints will be visible to everyone, and we will all KNOW, not trust, not hope, not wish...but KNOW that he is the truth, and at that moment, how will you feel knowing that you lived for you, and it cost you eternity? How will you feel at that moment when souls all around you are raising to the sky in joy, and you are standing on the ground watching? Will you be happy about those drunken parties, those flirty moments with that coworker, all those times you could have chosen to forgive instead of holding that grudge? What will matter at that moment?

If you say you believe, then believe and act accordingly. If you say you believe, and continue to live for you, then you are willingly giving up your right to God's love, grace, and eternal life. Who said life will continue until you are old and gray and you will go to heaven because you didn't kill, steal, or whatever? Nobody...it is our own delusion. We try to convince ourselves that we have it all figured out, but we better be sure of the actual truth. Look around you. In the last 10 years there has been droughts, famines, floods, recessions, loss of crops on the country-wide level, blizzards, volcanic activity, wars, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and much much more.

What if the world came to an end in three days? Where would your future lie?

The signs are very clear to anyone who is willing to open their eyes...


Sign that we are at the end of times

Satan is all around us

 Do yourself the favor of figuring out if you truly believe, and then ask yourself what that means. How important is God in your life, and how can you expect so much from Him and never give Him any glory, praise, worship, recognition, or validity in your life.

The time is nearer than we think, and at that moment when it comes to fruition, it will be too late to change your mind.

Just my $.02

Where Did Respect Go?

I can remember a day when people had respect for other people, and it wasn't that long ago. What happened to human beings just giving a darn about other human beings? When did our nation become so down right self-centered that we all feel like we are owed something?

The other day, I was at the grocery store and I couldn't help but to notice all the people in the parking lot, zooming around looking for a parking place and talking on their cell phones, not paying a bit of attention to the pedestrians walking around them.I watched as a little old lady, who couldn't have been less than 85 years old, wait at the crosswalk for a good 5 minutes, before the traffic lightened up enough for her to pass. I bet 15 cars passed by her and not one of them stopped to let her cross.

It was 95 degrees outside, and she was standing there in the blazing sun, hoping that someone would have the courtesy to stop and let her go into the store. She didn't flip anyone off, or rant and rave and the cars that were mere inches from running her over as they payed no attention to the crosswalk at all. She just waited patiently for her opening to come. What happened to the days when people gave a darn about the elders in our world? What is so hard about stopping your car, sitting for 20 seconds in the air conditioned convenience of the cushy front seat, while this little old lady made her way out of the heat? NOTHING...yet it seems that in today's world, people think the world revolves around them.

I had the pleasure of participating in the funeral of a long time family friend who passed away this week. I volunteered to be a Paul Bearer for the family. This very special lady was my neighbor growing up, and her family has always been like a second family to me so I was happy to help in any way I could. We attended the service, and then afterward, we got in our procession to head to the burial grounds. One car after another lined up with their hazard lights on as we followed the family car and the hearse across town.

I could not help but to notice how many people pulled over on the side of the road and stopped, showing their respects, as we passed by them. It was a short procession, so the wait for the oncoming traffic was as minimal as any funeral service I have ever been to. I also couldn't help but notice the overwhelming number of cars who didn't stop...didn't slow down, or pause at all. They just blasted right by all those who did stop as if they were angry for having to go around them. Not only did a huge number of on-comers not show respect for the death, but a ton of cars actually passed by our procession traveling the same direction, as we slowly went about our business. Are you kidding me? You pass a funeral procession as if they are holding you up? In my mind, your wife better be laying in the back seat with child about to bust, or there better be a major emergency for you to show that kind of disrespect for any family that has just lost a loved one.

As we inched our way through stop lights and intersections, I couldn't help but feel myself getting more angry at the thought of this kind of disrespect. I noticed in my rear view mirror that the outside lane of traffic was coming up beside us at a normal everyday pace, and so I did what anyone else should do in that same circumstance...I PULLED OVER INTO THEIR LANE AND MADE THEM SLOW DOWN AND RESPECT THE DEAD ! I hope those few cars that were planning to pass us got furious when I broke their speed down and locked them into a traffic jam behind us. I hope they had to sit there and pay attention to what was going on. More important, I hope they learned a lesson about respect, so next time, they will stay behind the procession and deal with the extra 10 minutes added to their useless lives.

I hope you all learn a lesson from my experience too. If you see someone trying to inch by a funeral, or if you are on the opposite side of the road and cars are honking at you because you stopped and they need to get by...pull your car sideways so they CANNOT pass, and make a statement for respect. Our country needs it, our youth needs to see it, and the dead and their families deserve it. If your mom, dad, sister, brother, or son or daughter had just left this God forsaken world, would that extra 5 minutes out of your day actually matter? Slow down and show some respect...if we don't respect others, who will respect us.

Our Country Needs Help

This country is one of the most amazing places in the world. It was founded 234 years ago (an important statistic considering that the average age of any civilization throughout history has been 200 years) by amazing men who wanted a better place for their children to grow up. Men who were self-aware, well-thought, spiritually rooted, and very educated. Men who had not only their minds, but their hearts, totally in tune with the pulse of the majority. These men knew what didn't work in government from experience, not from assumption, and they had seen the repercussions of taking the power away from the people, and allowing the government to make decisions for the people, without consideration for the very citizens they were put in to support.

Our country has slipped away from the very ideals that these men had in mind when they wrote the Constitution, one carefully-considered letter at a time. Our current government constantly neglects the very fundamentals established in the Declaration of Independence. They consistently show us that they have a new agenda, which is no longer based on the principals that America was founded on. These new agendas in the political world have nothing to do with the American citizen, and everything to do with self-gain for the political officials themselves.

We need to take our country back before it's too late. We have become a lazy and complacent society, quick to accept whatever is fed to us, and not to question those who are in power. We should all take time to read The Declaration again...to remember that the very men who founded this great country had decided that what their current government was doing was NOT acceptable. Men who decided that it was time to do something about it, and that it is our God-given right to have a say-so in the decisions that directly affect our lives, our families, our children's future, and our well-being. When will we realize that it is our right, and our responsibility, to question this runaway democracy, BEFORE it becomes a dictatorship? When will we realize that if we don't get active, our country will slip completely away from us, and then it will be too late?

Lessons Of Life

A very wise, and extremely rich and well-known business man, once said "The man who goes to bed as smart as he was when he woke up, is doing himself a great injustice".

Life is about a lot of things. We have work, jobs, family, friends, hobbies, responsibilities, and the list goes on and on. In every one of the ventures we take part in each day, there are valuable lessons to be learned. The great thing about identifying the lessons in each day, is that it helps us become better than we were the day before. If you want to succeed in life, whatever your personal definition of success might be, it almost always a guarantee that if you learn from your mistakes, from the world around you, and from the experiences you face, you will undoubtedly come out of it more enlightened. Enlightenment can help you with every single aspect of life.

When you wake up in the morning, make it an obligation to yourself to learn something new from the day. You don't have to go out looking for a lesson...they will come to you. Look at the experience of life in a single day, and realize that it offers some of the most valuable lessons of all. When you fail, learn, and move on. When you succeed, examine what you did to make it a success, and use that knowledge for tomorrows challenges. When given an opportunity, don't just take the easy road because of fear. Fear prevents us from so much that life has to offer. After all, the road less traveled is usually harder, but it often times, it is the most rewarding also.

Learning that life is not a set of daily activities, subject to the world's discretion. Life is about new experiences, new lessons, and new possibilities to gain from those things around us, which will make us better human beings. Life is not a constant...it is always in motion. It is either moving in the positive, or moving in the negative. Make your life what you want it to be by pushing it into the positive every chance you get. Take the lessons life offers constantly, and learn from them...move forward, and experience what life has to offer.

The Great Thing About The Truth

If a child is born blind, and has never seen the world, how would you describe colors to him/her? Having never seen the color blue, how would you describe the sky? It would be very difficult for the child to understand. Even thought the child doesn't understand the idea of color, it doesn't mean that color doesn't exist.

If you told the child that the sun, which is vital to their survival, rose in the East and set int he West, it would be up to that child to decide if they believed your statement or not. If the child cares to know the truth, they could ask other family members, whom they trust, and find out if it actually does rise and set as they have been told. Or, the child could decide that since they would never see the sun, it doesn't matter whether it rises in the East and sets in the West at all. Does this mean that the sun's consistent movement from East to West is not true? No...it just means that the child has a choice of whether or not to believe what is told to them.

We are a lot like this child. We have a choice to ask around, investigate, and put forth effort to know if what we are told is true. Some people choose to live in what they believe because they don't want to do the work of finding out the truth. Some people choose to live in their current beliefs because to know different would mean they would have to change their lives, and being the selfish creatures that we are, we want to keep doing it our way. Whether we choose to research the truth, or not....whether we choose to believe what we are told, or not...does not change the fact that the truth is the truth. That's the great thing about the truth...it is, no matter who chooses to believe it or not.

Don't we owe it to ourselves to at least try to gain the knowledge, and the power that comes from that knowledge, in order to gain the truth. Is it better to live in our own false reality, and deal with the consequences of that reality, or better to gain the freedom of the truth and live according to it, so that the consequence becomes a reward?

Isn't it at least worth the effort of trying to find out to avoid the consequence? Who knows, you may be surprised at what the actual truth is once you decide to start looking into it for yourself.

An End In Sight

Technology has made life fast and easy in most cases. We have cell phones that do everything for us from our calenders to our photographs. They receive email on the go, text message, allow us to touch the internet at any time of the day and update our status on pages like Myspace and Facebook, so that the people we are not text messaging or calling can know what we are doing. And most phones have unlimited calling so we can talk until our batteries run dead. These are not all bad things. Parents want to get in touch with their children, wives need their husbands, sons and daughters need their parents, whenever and wherever they may be. Cell technology has opened our world up for boundless communication, with of course the exception of the service of the area you may be roaming through at the time.

Think with me for a moment at the way our country has changed technologically for a moment. In the last 100 years, we have seen 1000's of inventions that have improved our life...the microwave, the television, the space satellite, the air conditioner, the copy machine, the personal computer...these are just a few minor ones of history. In fact, Penicillin was found between 1928-1938 and could be argued as one of the better discoveries in the last 100 years. Without it, we may not be here to enjoy all the technology at our fingertips.

Out of all the discoveries of the last century, the microchip has got to be the single most influential discovery. It powers everything in our technological world. Smaller that a dime, it is quite literally the brains, the heart, and the nervous system of every digital device on the planet. It allows all things in our technological world to work. Since its introduction in the 1970's there have been more medical, mathematical, and scientific breakthroughs than in any other period of time. With tens of billions of chips running everything from Jumbo jets to stereos, many scholars now rank the microchip as one of humankind's greatest achievements.

I heard something the other month that got me thinking about these advancements of our country over the last 100 years. It said that what we have learned in the last 100 years will allow us to advance 1000 times more in the next 100 years. To think we could advance that much more is mind-boggling. Computer chips installed in every baby born, which will monitor everything about the person until death? Artificial Intelligence that can make life easier or faster for us?

Did anyone see The Matrix? How much easier do we need life to be? Maybe the brains of our society can figure out how to clone the DNA of animals to reproduce them genetically...but does that mean they should? Who will ask the questions that will stop them from putting chips in you to monitor every move and transaction you make. They will know what kind of shampoo you buy at the store, how much you spend in a day, where you go, what you do, and who you do it with. This data will allow them to market to you specifically, strategical plan, and develop a system to actively steer your decisions, and this will ultimately take away our God given right of choice.

Wake up people! Technology can be great, but lets find a cure for diseases like Cancer and Aids. Lets find a fuel source that doesn't make us dependent on oil from countries that are made up of a majority of people who hate our guts. Lets use technology to benefit mankind and the ecosystems of our world, and stop using it to control purchasing habits and make the all-mighty dollar. Where are the people making the decisions around here? We can land a man on the face o the moon in the 60's, we can clone a sheep in the late 1990's, but we can't come up with a way to make our pollution less, and our rain forests remain preserved and abundant? Where are our priorities at people? What good will all this technology, and the ease of life it creates for us, be if our planet is in such bad shape we can't enjoy any of it? How lazy are we that we need more than we have today?

There is a weapon, which is already in existence, called an EMP. It stands for Electro-Magnetic Pulse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse). What would happen if a few of these were targeted at our major power hubs across the nation? What about if the development of these weapons evolves into a weapon with a massive blast radius. Instead of a 50 mile radius, what if it were 500 miles. Three or four bombs could effectively shut down our country. We would go from what we know today, to horse and buggy and candlelight in a matter of minutes.

Who says that the technology of today is here to stay?

Think about it...

Over-paid Egos and Over-valued People

It seems that society has a real strong understanding of the type of role models that they want to follow. The only problem is that these role models are not worthy of the admiration they are receiving. People think that financial success, and fame in the public eye, means they can do what they want, and it is not without good reason. From pro athletes to millionaire heirs and heiresses, the culture we live in puts people on the highest pedestal possible with no real substantial basis, and these same people get away with breaking the rules time and time again.

The list of professional athletes which get into trouble is astounding, and then within months, they are placed right back onto the pedestals from which they fell. I have been so excited lately for the NFL, which has acquired a no-nonsense Commissioner who has "been laying the smack down" on these rule breakers. Michael Vick is the first example that comes to the minds of everyone who pays attention tot he sports world and rule breaking. He was the ring leader of a dog-fighting network, and he faced jail time because of it.

And the trend of justice almost started to snowball. A while back a rare case occurred where an athlete accidentally shot himself in the leg in a night club, and it ended in a sentence of three years in prison, for a charge of carrying a non-registered, concealed weapon on his person. This is a no-no in the state of New York, and the lack of responsibility on the athlete's part cost him three years of his life, millions of dollars in salary, and since he was in the prime of his potential, possibly his career in the NFL.

But what about the others who have not been convicted? Are they just innocent victims of the media's distortion of the facts? Big Ben's rape accusation of a young girl is not the first of the decade. He was deemed innocent, but the city of Pittsburgh got a sour taste in their mouth, and they all but banished him form the city until a public apology and a "sincere" repentance got him a second chance. But what about the other rape accusation of the last ten years in which the athlete was not found guilty?

Kobe Bryant went through the same thing years ago, and yet the public has all but forgotten about it. I guess if the legal system says you are innocent of one crime, the other moral crimes you commit don't count against your character. This man cheated on his wife. That's called adultery in my America.And while this may not be a crime worthy of punishment according to man's laws, it is one of the sacred TEN COMMANDMENTS. Apparently, as long as there is no jail time associated with the crime, we don't care to acknowledge it as wrong.

Tiger Woods, possibly the greatest golfing phenom to this point in history, also committed adultery. Although, he has a reason...he is a sex addict. I can't tell you if Tiger has a chemical imbalance or not, but I can tell you that you show me a man who doesn't love sex, and I will show you a woman in a man's clothes. I understand that people have diseases, addictions, imbalances, and problems with will power. But, our society simply accepted his reasons and it's back to the way it was because, "we can't imagine golf without the greatest golfer of all time". The sport took a major ratings hit, and the public tuned out. All I'm saying is that could it not be possible that the Networks and Tiger decided to send him off for a vacation at a sex addiction clinic, come up with an excuse worthy of pity (like a disease), and then get back to business? We as a society just swallow whatever pill the media feeds us, and then call it truth. WAKE UP PEOPLE!

The question is, "do you think the people in high places are capable of doing whatever it takes for greed?"

Personally, I think that question has been answered so many times, it is harder for us to ignore the truth than it would be to accept the truth. Greed, fame, fortune, and success run the world, and the common man has no real understanding of the lengths these guys will go to to make the all mighty dollar.

I'm all for second chances, but once you get that chance, you better darn well use it wisely. Vick is still hanging out with thugs, Woods is still hiding something serious, and Bryant is winning so it doesn't matter to anyone right now. Paris Hilton goes to jail but a nervous breakdown gets her a pardon? What the heck is going on when no one stands up and calls this what it is...BULL. If i went to prison, would I get the same treatment? I doubt it.

O.J.Simpson got away with murdering two people. They had tapes from 911 calls where he was literally beating down the door to get to Nicole time and time agian, and n one opened their eyes to the fact that this man has problems. A decade later, he finally gets his due and gets sentenced to prison for armed robbery. God is always just.


Wake up people, and at least take it upon yourself to realize that your knowledge of the greed out there is limited, and that anything is possible in the world we live in today. As long as we put these people on the highest of pedestals, and worship them as great people, they will continue to abuse and distort, hide and lie, and they will continue to do what they can get away with. When will we start to take responsibility for who we admire, and start to change the country we live in for our sakes?

Control - Reality or Illusion?

I have come to the realization over the last few years, that I need to gain some sort of control back in my life. I had looked down every alley, opened every door, rambled through the cabinets, and dusted off the memories files away in my mind searching for the control that I had lost. After a few weeks of searching every avenue possible, I came to an astounding conclusion…Control is an illusion. Man’s need for control, from the earliest days of men, has caused him to conjure up the idea that he could buy, learn, train, prepare, retain, detain, or delay in order to gain control over his situation. We need control to feel better about our individual situations. It makes us feel like the unexpected is not a reality. If we can control life, we can control destiny, and this control leads to security and comfort. The reality I found is this…we can control three things in our lives.

First, we can control what we take into our bodies. There are four categories of bodily consumption. What you see, what you eat, what you hear, what touches you. You can eat healthy, or you can choose to ignore the quality of food you consume. Most likely, no one will ever stuff a Big Mac or donuts into your mouth. What you eat is purely your choice...a decision that is totally in your hands. Even though we have control in this area, it is not without its exceptions. Did you know that a food manufacturer can grind up a cow hooves, cartilage, intestines, etc. and make a hamburger patty out of it, and our FDA allows them to stamp this patty with a 100% Beef label because it all came from a cow’s body. Very little beef we purchase from fast food establishments is actual meat/muscle tissue by majority.

The air around you touches your body internally and externally. Unfortunately, unless you live in a controlled vacuum, you are forced to breathe the air around you daily. This air is not as pure as it could be, due to pollutants; therefore we are forced to breathe it as it is available to us. We can choose to live in less polluted cities, or at elevations where smog is not as present, but it is still our option to care about what we breathe. Our society has become one of acceptance when it comes to this. There are plenty of Green organizations that are fighting to clean up the air of our planet, but the fight is a tough one when the numbers of people who are active against the quality of air, which has developed over the last 50 years, are so few.

The third issue of control falls in the category of what we see. Our society has based its structure on the visual. The colors and designs of everything in our world have come to matter to an extreme sense. Cars are sleeker, clothes are sexier, tanned bodies are better than pale ones, women and men need to look like movie stars in order to gain the successes of the world. This concept of the visual appeal trickles down to the even smallest areas of life. When you go into a convenience store to purchase a drink, you make a choice based on several things. What flavor does your mouth tell you to buy, what color of liquid appeals to you, which is the most cost effective for your situation, and believe it or not, which bottle shape do you like the most. Coke has changed the shape of the plastic bottle of their product several times in the last 15 years in hopes to find the most effective style to appeal to the public. We can’t change what shows up in front of our eyes, but we do have control in one way…we can choose to learn to see the forest instead of focusing on the tree.

What we hear affects us as much as what we see, if not more. At the conception of music, it was very limited in comparison to today’s selection. We have Country, Rap, Hip-Hop, Gospel, Bluegrass, Blues, Jazz, and on and on and on. Each musical style has been influenced by another style, and artistic expression has taken music to an all-time boundless entity. We also hear other people on a daily basis. The words others use, the dialects we hear, the terms and phrases, and the audible attitudes around us, all affect us even when we are unaware of it. Have you ever started a new relationship with someone and noticed that after a few months of being around them, you started to use phrases that that person uses on a regular basis. Have you noticed that when a northerner moves to the south, they eventually lose their northern draw and pick up a southern one. What we hear is out of our control. Unless you are unfortunate enough to be deemed deaf, our ears work regardless of the circumstance. We hear a lot in a single day, but what we listen to is a different story. The definition of listening is “to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing; give ear”. It also means “to pay attention; heed; obey”. But to truly understand how to listen, I think it takes and understanding of the three separate definitions combined. The third definition gives us a little more insight into the passion and soul of listening…”to wait attentively for a sound”. Attentively is the most important attribute of listening in my personal opinion. We can choose to listen to the things that are truth. We can choose to listen to things that educate us, and make us more aware of the truths around us. If we can learn to see the forest instead of the trees, we can learn to hear the truth in the world.

The second area we have control is in the area of what we say. We are the only ones who can speak the words we speak. No one can make you say anything you don't want to say, with the possible exception of holding you at gunpoint. But, for us to choose to speak or not to speak, and to choose what words we use when speaking, is completely our God given right as humans. Our founding Fathers knew this when they gave us as Americans the Freedom of Speech. But just because you have the right to speak, doesn't always mean that you should. The one thing that will always be true, is that once you say it, there is no taking it back. You can apologize for the wrong choice, but the words are out there forever. We have control over what we say, and we need to treat this liberty with respect. Society has gotten very loose in the area of verbal communication. America thinks that freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you want without consequence. When you exercise your right to it, you still have to face the consequences of the words. The point is that we do have control over the words we use, and that is powerful in itself. And with power comes responsibility. America, exercise your responsibility and choose wisely.

The third and final area of control is in how we treat others. We can chose to harbor ill will, or we can forgive. We can do for others, or we can expect others to do for us. We can hold onto the thread of self-entitlement that we have gotten accustomed to, or we can willingly do for those who do not do for us in return. We have a choice to curse that driver for cutting us off on the way to work, or we can choose to try to understand that they may just not have seen us. They may be running late for work and this may be their last warning and they may be facing termination. They may be in the middle of tragic circumstance, or a terrible family situation, and they may be in a state of mind that is not lending itself to the drive ahead of them. We can chose to try to walk in others shoes, and understand from their perspective, or we can chose to see the situation from our own perspective and maintain a selfishness that causes our quality of life to deteriorate daily.

We have control over these few things in our life, and it is our luxury to be able to exercise this control for our benefit. I know that I can become complacent in society and accept what it tells me, shows me, or decides for me. But I don’t want to be a circumstance of trend, or society's choices. I choose to look at my life and ask myself if I think that I have to look a certain way, or if I care about what I allow into my body. I have the choice to hear the world, or listen to the truth. I have a choice and a responsibility to live inside my own box, outside my own box, or to live in the confines of the control of the world we live in. We have such little actual control, isn't it our responsibility to take that small amount of control and use it to our absolute advantage? I think so...

Interesting Facts about where we are as a Country

Take a look at this statement, unofficially accredited to Alexander Tytler, and decide what you think about our Political situation, and the state of our country...


A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship, and then a monarchy.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage.