You already know the answer

People come into my office and expect me to tell them what to do. I NEVER tell people what to do. I think we all know what needs to be done, we just want people to validate our feelings. I really do believe that our natural instinct guides us with all aspects of our lives..from what we eat to who we date.

I had an experience when I was an adolescent. I decided to do something I felt was probably not the best option for me because someone I trusted really wanted me to do. It wasn't a bad thing that they asked me, it just wasn't the right thing for me and I knew it. I did it, and that one choice spiraled into a series of horrible mistakes I will never forget or be rid of. I regret it to this day and I kick myself in the pants because I didn't listen to my instinct. I have rarely if ever made that mistake from that day forward.

My point is that we already know the answers but we doubt ourselves. If we would just act on it, we learn to rely on our instinct more often and we would learn to trust it more often. We wouldn't have to rely on others to validate us. All of the validation would come from inside.

Control

I am ahuge fan of old school Janet Jackson. One of her best songs came on and my brain started working. It was her first single..."Control". I love that song. I started to think of the reasons why Janet could have written that song. We all know that Janet is from one dysfunctional household (which dysfunctional families are not technically "dys"functional because they still manage to function in some way, shape or form..I guess the technical term would be maladaptive).
What I started to think was that Janet felt a need to have or feel some control over thier lives. I would imagine that everyone wants to feel control over their lives and their future and their destiny. What amazes me is that despite the fact that they want to feel control, they continue to place real or imagined expectations onto themselves. I will give you an example...some women think that they need to be the perfect mother. By perfect they mean the most organized, or the cleanest house or the best behaved kids or no fights with their spouses. I don't get it. Why place the expectation on yourself to be perfect and then complain that you can't be? Why not rid yourself of the expectation and be happy with where you are? Even if your house is not perfect and your kids are not the best does not mean that you can't work towards those goals. Why do people assume they can't work towards those things without killing themselves?
Men come in and expect to be able to afford the nicest houses or the fanciest cars or the latest electronics and kill themselves to get it because of some arbitrary expectation by others? These expectations will drive you to work twice as much as you should and then kill yourself for not having enough family time. The people you surround yourself with may also contribute to your crazy expectations. I choose to surround myself with people who don't compete with each other and who can appreciate what they have.
I learned a long time ago that you can't please everyone and as long as you compare yourself to others, you will never be good enough. Why even continue to perpetuate them? Why not focus on being the best Rosie, or Carly, or Jeniffer , or Beth? You don't have to worry about continuously compare.
I think that true control of your life is being free of imagined or other's expectations and focusing on being the best person you can be. That is true happiness. Being miserable is the constant need to keep up with those around you or setting unrealistic expectations.

Does anyone else think this is wierd?

Collin and I went to a buffet yesterday for Christmas because we thought it would be fun. We went with a group of friends and had a great time. While we were there, I noticed a little boy who appeared to be bi-racial eating dinner with his father and other family members. The boy had to have been about 10 or 11 years old, and he was sportin' a mullett. The story gets a little bit more wierd right here. His mullett was of a Jheri Curl type quality. What is worse is that his father kept refferring to him as "honey". It's one thing for a couple to refer to each other as "honey" (I hate pet names, but I can tolerate a couple calling themselves honey) but for a father to refer to his 11 year old son as "honey" was a little strange and kinda dirty. A nickname would have been much more appropriate. Does anyone else think this is wierd?

I teach a group of delinquent juveniles. In one of my grup sessions, we talked about values. We talked about what we would do if someone in the grocery store violated one of my boundaries like pushing my cart or ramming me with their cart. I told the kids that I would not beat the crap out of a person for ramming my cart in the grocery store but I would let them know how rude, unappreciated and disrespectful it was. In my mind, a person who would do that obviously has some serious problems. It's not worth upsetting myself over or even starting a fight. When I told my kids that, they laughed at me and told me that only white people do this. I was puzzled. I said, "you're telling me that only white people believe in the integrity and being the better person and choosing a nonviolent way of handling their problems?" Of course they all said yes.
I was immediately brought back to a segment I saw on PBS or something with Barrack OBama being interviewed. He is the bi-racial Senator form Illinois who may run for president of the US. In his interview, he said that when he was a young man in his adolescence he struggled with trying to figure out who he was (like any adolescent). He said that as he grew older, he realized that honesty, integrity, and basic decent human values were not "WHITE" valeus but were human values. I thought that that was so profound. I wondered what it is in our society that has not changed over the last 35 years or so that would make Barrack Obama feel the same way in his adolescence that my youth are exerienceing today? Is it that we don't teach our children right?
Mr. Obama's mother tried to instill those values in her son yet it took a very long time for him to understand the meaning behind what she was trying to say. I am black. I don't think that these are white values. I think that these are human values. I have the church to help me understand that. I prefer to think that I feel this way about values because that is what is taught in scripture. If most people saw me, they would assume I get those values from a "WHITE" church. What is interesting is that the church has more non white members than white members at this point. Why is it that black kids associate these values with white people? Is it because we have been oppressed for generations? In our quest to be equal, why do we continue to separate ourselves by refusing to emulate basic human values? Why do we continue to perpetuate the negative stereotypes associated wiht our race? How much is society responsible for and how much are we responsible for? Hwere do we draw the lines? Yes, we have been oppressed for hundreds of years, but at what point do we decide not to be oppressed anymore and teach values, promote education, teach our children right?
The most interesting thing to me is that these kids would probably praise Martin Luther King Jr. up and down but it seems to me that they missed the meaning behind his message. He was an advocate for nonviolence even when his boundaries and values were violated. The first solution that came to these juveniles minds' were violent means of enforcing their boundaries. These kids missed the meaning behind the message just as Senator Obama missed the meaning behind his mom's message several years ago.