Willard

This is the story about my experience with a 13 year old boy named Willard.

I changed the names.

I came into the cabin after a few hours of hauling luggage for arriving campers. I looked around to see several preteen boys that would be spending the week together. Max, my co-counselor, was having the boys play some games so that everyone could get to know each other a little better. I made an effort to go around and talk to each of the boys for a few minutes, asking them questions about their lives and why they came to camp. I came around to Willard, and we made a good first impression on each other. He seemed like a fun kid, full of energy and outgoing. I did not know then that throughout the rest of the week Willard would reveal to me the limits of my patience.

We started off on a good foot, I was demonstrating my juggling skills and helping the boys learn to juggle. Willard had a special interest in Juggling, and fell in love with it right away. It was all he wanted to do with every free moment he had. He would always ask me if he could use my juggling balls. I could see the disappointment on his face when I had to tell him that juggling rocks was not allowed. I have found that the boys who get the most into juggling tend to have stressful situations at home.

The first day of camp after arrival, I was assigned to help Dan, a fellow counselor, facilitate a group of campers in playing sports. Willard was disrespectful to Dan as he was giving instructions, and Dan said "Don't talk back to me." I had noticed before that Willard did have a poor attitude, but hearing Dan say this got me to realize that Willard was having trouble respecting others.

The next day, we were playing carpet ball and waiting for the lunch bell to ring. Things are going well, I'm watching Willard play, he is winning round after round. The lunch bell rings, and it's time to go to the dining hall. I have to tell Willard 3 times to quit playing, and lifts his hand threateningly as if he is going to throw the ball at me. I was very frustrated at him, and as we are walking up the dining hall, I am harsh with him. My employer just happened to be at the top of the hill, so I thought to myself "I can imagine he would not be happy with me treating the camper like this." It was important for me to be in that situation, because it forced me to look at my actions from a more objective point of view. Upon later reflection this point of view allowed me to realize that I should have looked over that offense and been more of a friend.

I went to talk with my co, Max, about it one day. He said, "I know his is just a kid, be he is still a jerk" I had to agree with him on that. I said "I know that I need to try and show love to him anyway, but it is really hard." Max said "He probably has a tough home life, and that is why he is acting out like this, he may not get a lot of good attention from his parents."

That night as we were getting settled in the cabin and winding down for the day, I called Willard over to talk with me. "Willard, I've noticed you have been very disrespectful to your fellow campers and the counselors. I know you love to juggle, but this is how it is going to be. I expect you to show respect to other counselors from now on. If I hear you talking back to a counselor, I will revoke your privileges to use my juggling balls for the day. As long as you do well, you can use any of my juggling equipment any time that you want." He was very cooperative, and gracefully accepted my correction. I knew that he intended to make an effort, and that he wanted to do better.

Unfortunately my talk with Willard about respect must not have sunk in deep enough. The next day he punched another camper. I took him in the office to talk to my employer. He set Willard aside and had a long talk with him. I did not have the opportunity to sit with them because my co-counselor was on break and I needed to be with my cabin. But I am sure that I would have benefited from seeing how my employer dealt with the situation if I had the opportunity to be around. Looking out the window from the dining, hall, I saw from his body language as he spoke that my employer was being gentle with Willard, and that he was really getting through to him. Willard didn't punch anyone for the rest of the week.

Max and I noticed that Willard had hung towels and blankets over his bunk to make a wall between him and the rest of the cabin. Max brought this up to me and said "It seems he is separating himself from the rest of the cabin". This displayed how he was not opening up to us and would pull back into his fortress away from his fellow campers. I did not know what to do about this.

It came time to send the kids home to their parents. This week I got to see the kids off as they left. Willard was taking the bus back to his home. I walked with him, in silence, from the dining hall to the where the bus stopped and he was the last one to get on. I had one last opportunity to leave him on a positive note. As he took his first step on to the bust, I put my hand on his shoulder, "Hey Willard" He stopped and turned around "Huh?" I extended my hand for a hand shake. "Willard, I'm really glad that I got to spend a week with you. It's been a good time. Keep on working on your respect." I smiled at him as I said this. He looked at me and in all seriousness he said "I will" and got on the bus. I walked away, feeling glad that I had at least shown him one act of kindness.

This brings up one thing that I learned. Often times the stresses of my current situation and the flaws and limits of my character cause me to behave in a way that is less than ideal. In hindsight, I see that I had passed up too many opportunities to connect with Willard and to make him feel more at home at camp. My own lack of patience had put me at enmity with Willard, which made it hard for me to be his friend. I was looking at things from my own perspective instead of his, which made it impossible for me to sympathize with his struggles. This reinforces my conviction that I should try to see beyond a person's actions and words, and try and support and comfort them in regards to what is hurting them instead of offer more resistance to them because of what they are doing wrong.

So what I need to do when I am stressed in the future is to examine myself to see what flaws of my character and what limits of virtue are causing me to be less than ideal, and to prayerfully and earnestly push and stretch myself to do better in that area. One important way to notice my limits is to look at how more mature and experienced people deal with similar situations to mine and compare that to how I do things.

Reflection

One thing that I find is very important to do is to reflect. I often reflect on things that I've witnessed or been part of. I think back on conversations that I've had to try and understand better myself and the other person. I remember things that I've done or tried to do to realize more about my
character and personality. Sometimes I reflect on ideas that I've had in the past, and track how my though processes and perspectives have changed over time. I feel that this is all very important for developing as a mature person. The more I understand about all the realities surrounding my influence, the better I can intention to use my influence for God glorifying purposes. If I'm looking at my desires and motives and then I can discern how the attitude of my heart can be pleasing to God, then I'm better off that way. If I look at the consequences of my words or my actions, I can learn to speak and behave in a way that will honor God. My goal is to behave like Jesus Christ, so when I reflect upon things I have an image that I compare myself to.
Just looking at my heart or mind wouldn't do me any good if I was not going to compare it to something else.
For example, I have a thought about saying something cruel and destructive to another person. I recognize what I am intending to say and I can think about it. But from my understanding of the principals that Jesus adhered to in his life, I realize that saying this thing to this person would not be Christ like. So since I compared myself to Christ in my reflection, it reveals the differences between us and brings up the question: Do I want to act like Jesus? That thought process can happen any time. It could happen before I say the unkind words, during, or after when I'm looking back at the whole situation.

There are a few ways that I reflect. Sometimes I read the bible or some other book. Sometimes I play guitar and sing and listen to the words that I'm coming up with. Sometimes I have conversations with people I trust. Sometimes I just sit and have focused thoughts about a certain thing. Sometimes I write my thoughts on paper or in the computer. What I'm writing now is kind of like reflection.

I can think of a few good reasons why I should take time to just think and analyze my self and the things around me.
I can learn to be a better man.
That is one my my conscious goals. By seeing and noticing the way I behave and the way other men behave, I can develop an image of what a good man is. I use the bible for this too. So by reflecting and examining myself up against what the bible says is a good man, and by trying to understand the things that I've witnessed other men doing, I can discern what is good to do and what is good to not do. One I realize that, I can think about it more to develop a plan on how I can grow and develop to be more holy and manly. That is pretty broad though and I guess it would cover everything.
I can just get accomplish my goals in general.
By thinking about my goals and my abilities with purpose I can develop plans and systems to get things done. It sets up a base for my efforts kind of. Thinking is the first step to doing something anyway right?
I can learn how to improve my relationships with other people.
I can think about how other people behave around me. I can learn what people are like by closely examining the things they say to certain people in certain situations when they feel certain ways. When I know those things it allows me to be sensitive to that. Sensitive, that means I sense it, I am aware. So being aware of the reality of a person's habits and emotions and speech, that makes me more able to be a good friend to them. It basically helps me to get to know people better. The more I know about somebody and my relationship with them, the more I know what is best for them in terms of me. Like what I should do with them or say to them, that is important for me to know. Blah blah blah.

For me it is like a vital part of living. I think of a rat going through a maze. The more I think about it, the better I'm going to do in this maze. If I don't think at all, there is nothing keeping me from just walking back and forth on the same path forever. But if I do think critically, to the best of my ability, it would be like a rat that gains control over it's whole body, alters it's genetic code, grows wings and flies out of the lab to live in lush gardens of pure bliss and awesomeness. That is exactly what it's like.

We're small.

Take a 3-dimensional area of space. There is a single point on that graph, with no extent. That is now. That is this moment in time and all of reality within the bounds of time. That point is on a line. That line is the progression of time. That line might be going straight, it might not be. That line may just be part of a 3 dimensional shape. There are an infinite amount of these points spanning out to every octant of this graph. Then there is another level. What this is, it is as to time as time is to a three dimensional shape. Will we ever get to experience being there? The small cages we are in now are still too big for most people manage. We have such a very small amount of freedom relative to the levels of reality that we are not at liberty to even exist in. We already have more freedom than we know what to do with.

What are friends for?

I have been thinking this thought a little bit lately. I have been thinking about my friends. Many of the things that I've learned about life and myself were from my friends and from observing my friendships.
When I worked at as a camp counselor this summer I made friends with some of my co-workers. They were all very different. I observed them and how they treated me and other people. There were a lot of good things I saw in them, and I tried to understand the good traits in these people so that I could also develop those good traits in myself. For example, one friend I had was always very nice and positive. She was polite and friendly even when she was not having a good day. So I talked to her about it and she explained to me the reasons why she would be nice. She basically explained that she was looking through the perspective of other people, and she understood how other people were effected depending on whether or not she was nice to them. She said something like "If we are mean to somebody, they will see us as just another person that doesn't care." That really put it into perspective for me. I still am not nice to people all the time or friendly all the time, but just knowing that having that perspective can help me work towards that is helpful. I have noticed some difference in myself towards that though. It takes a lot of work to shift my way of thinking.
I usually observe my friendships more when I am closer with a person. I want to learn about myself and about them and to grow into a better person through the experiences and lessons I learn from them. I think it helps me to appreciate my friends more when I try to learn from them. One reason for that is because I look for the positive qualities in them as something that I can try to add to myself.
Another example is how I have been trying to learn from one of my other friends. Even before I began working at camp I knew that there were positive qualities about this person that I needed to develop in myself. In the beginning of my time working at camp, I wrote in my journal "I think I'm starting to take on some of the positive qualities of -my friend-. I can be friends with girls now."
This was 6 months ago. For some reason which I don't care to explain I was just very unwilling and reluctant to be friends with girls. But after that, I did make friends with a bunch of people of both genders, and it shattered a lot of the thought structures that I had developed in my mind that were keeping me from growing.
The beautiful thing about this is that it is one of those things where I can see God working in my life. I noticed it several months before I was a camp counselor, that God was teaching me to accept females as real people and stop being sexist and prejudice against girls.
So after I realized that, I just kept seeing it more and more how I was changing so much. Every friendship I have now, I can learn something about myself and there is potential for me to grow and be a better person. I think that my friendships are gifts that God gives me.
It has overwhelmed me at times, when I look at all the relationships that I have and I see how God is really intimately involved in my life through them. It amazes me more than anything to think of how deeply and how much God is thinking about me. The way I think about it, is that God works through people. When someone does something good that helps another person, it is because God in them was working through them or God was leading them to do the thing. After I realized that it changed the way I prayed for other people too. When I had the idea to pray for someone yesterday, I thought of it as God telling me to pray that thing. I know that God loves people, and I don't think it would be possible for me to love someone more or want more good than God already wants for them. So as I prayed for my friend, I did not think of it as me doing anyone any favors. I thought of it as God sharing His hopes and desires with me, as a way for Him to share the joy of blessing my friend that I was praying for with me. So at the same time I thanked God for putting the prayer in my heart.
Well those are a few things that God had me learn through having friends. I think that there are vital life lessons that are impossible to learn without friends.

I Dreamed This

This is a story about a city of people. The lives of it's citizens were totally regimented by central planners. All the children were named by the government. Their first initial was determined by their class, and they were not allowed to move from the section of their city assigned to their class. The lower on the alphabet that their first initial was, the higher up they were on the class structure. The ruling class had numbers before their names. The people's humanity was forgotten and out of mind, and their level of existence was reduced to that of of machines. Efficiency and the survival of the present structure was the law of the land. People died when was most efficient, and they were born when was most efficient according to the central planners.
This city was shut off from the rest of the outside world. In fact by using highly advanced technology, they opened up a portal and settled their population in a hidden dimension in space. The city was the only reality in this dimension, with no sky and no planets, it was only the city on a circular area encased in void.
A man named Alexander was sent by a secret policing force to investigate this city and to help the people to overthrow the tyranny. So Alexander was sent through a highly advanced machine that warped him into the other dimension. He was there and was able to sneak in.
He started in the area of the lowest class of citizens. He was able to get connected with the people underground and they supported his mission. He was able to go undetected by the ruling power because they didn't feel it was important to pay close attention to the most outer class. These people were kept down by lack of education and were only there because it was more efficient to let them fend for themselves than to remove them. They were seen as totally valueless to the central power, but neither helped or threatened their order, so it was most efficient to not pay heed to their existence.
After getting some support with the underground, Alexander tried to sneak into the next level. He snuck through the network and spoke to different people about the idea of breaking free from the order and reclaiming their humanity. As he got further in to the center of the city, people were less and less accepting of his idea of humanity. Eventually the people could not even grasp the concept of being more human than they were. This was all they knew, and all they had ever seen because they were not exposed to the outer level where the humanity of the people had not been totally programmed out of their minds and lives.
Then he got to the I class of people. He realized that the central power were aware of his presence and his actions. He tried to go under the radar but they found him. He was instantly transported suddenly to the Y area near the outside of the city. Alexander realized that this was his only chance to stop the machine. He tried to get as many people as he could to run with him towards the capital and attempt to get more people to march and people to join and break from the established order all at once. All of the people from the Y and Z district joined him. They marched on to the X district, but much to his disappointment the X citizens followed the prompt from the central command center to repel the people. Many of the people from the X district that were repelling the marchers were once supporting Alexander in his cause, but they had to do as the rest of the X citizens were doing for fear of the consequences for breaking the order. The borders between the X district and the Y district were equipped with energy force fields. As soon as the marchers were repelled behind the border, that section of the force field was activated and they could no longer push forward in that direction. Many X citizens were trapped on the other side. Eventually the Y district was totally cut off from the rest of the city, and the people were all crowded together looking. The commotion stopped and they all stared towards the center. A huge blast of red light came from the capital building into the sky. It arched up and started to come down, heading towards the Y and Z districts. As soon as the beam of light came close, it spread out and the entire district was saturated with the red light. In a moment of time, the light blinked off and only darkness was left. The Y and Z districts had been ejected from the dimension and into non existence, a long with all of the people that were there.

Tongue

The tongue is a fire. It can start massive waves of destruction. But it can have a positive effect of the same magnitude if used properly. If a man has full control over what he says, he has full control over all of himself and he is a complete perfected man.
I've been thinking about how words effect people. I try to be conscious of the effects that my words are having and to be careful about what kind of things I say. I hate saying bad things about other people, and I especially hate hearing bad things about people. When people hear negative stuff about other people it gives them a preconception about them. It is really hard not to think about bad things that other people have said about a person later on. Even if I call out people who are talking trash about another people and say something good about them them instead, it still messes up my mind.
I don't think people realize how much of a negative impact they have when they spread negative things about people. It hurts everyone who hears it or says it, not just the person who is getting talked about negatively.
In certain company I won't even bring up other people if I have something nice to say about them because I know that some kind of negative talk will probably follow. That is depressing.

Positive words effect people too. I've found that when people call me awesome or a genius it boosts my ego to insane degrees. Especially when girls do it. I'm sure there is a reason for that. Getting compliments from the opposite sex is way better than getting compliments from other dudes. Like I still like it when anyone says I'm a genius but for some reason when girls say nice things about it me it is like a whole different level. I rarely forget a compliment that I got from a girl. I'm probably insecure or something. That is one of the things I try not to hold back to much. If I come up with something good to say about someone that I genuinely think is true, I will try to say it. I would feel guilty if I made a compliment to someone that I didn't really feel confident about even if it made them feel good.
I just want to say that people should really think about everything they say. They should be asking questions like:
Why do I want to say this?
What effect will this have on me and others if I say this in this way?
Why do I need to say this?
There are a bunch of other questions to ask. Knowing the answer to those questions would probably help a lot of people.
This is an example. Why do I want to say what I'm saying in this blog? Because I think it is important for me to practice forming my ideas in a way that other people can comprehend them, and I feel strongly the issue of people being responsible with their gift of speech.
What effects will this have on people? Well I think that some people like to hear what I have to say. I wrote it into a blog that only a few people know about because that way only people who are really interested in reading it will see it. That way people who can't handle disagreeing with my ideas won't use it as an excuse to get angry. This will effect me by clearing my mind a little bit, and will allow me to further develop my thought as I go over what I wrote in my mind.
Why do I need to say what I'm saying in this blog? So that I can get better at putting my thoughts on to paper and I can have a little more experience writing while keeping an audience in mind instead of just for myself. That is important to me because I want to provide other people the opportunity to benefit from my way of thinking and awareness of reality by writing.

I really do ask myself some of these questions when I get second thoughts about saying certain things and it always helps.

Women?

I was just taking a Psych test. I finished early and walked out into the hall. Right as I walked out a girl started to walk behind me. I don't know if she was already in the hall or if she followed me out of the class. But I decided that I would just walk at a slow pace because my brother was still taking a test and I didn't want to sit in my car too long while I was waiting for him.

I expected the girl to walk past me and leave. But she just stayed behind me and waited for me to get to the door. I didn't think much of it at first but when I got to the door I thought of something. I pushed the door open and it wouldn't open because I didn't push the handle. Instead of going through the other door she stood there behind me and waited for me to go through the door. I opened the door and held it open for her. She said "thank you" and she seemed to really appreciate it. I then realized that the whole walk down the hall she was aiming for me holding the door open for her.
Isn't that special? Well I don't know that for sure because I don' know about girls, but I don't think that is too far out of a guess so I'll go with it.

So a total stranger went slightly out of her way to share the holding the door open experience with me. I know she must have had some kind of motivation for waiting for me to hold the door open for her. I don't think it was just so that she wouldn't have to open it herself, or was it? Are girls like that? I wonder if she was going for that because she got some kind of sense of satisfaction from me holding the door open for her. I know that I got some kind of sense of satisfaction from it, and I wasn't even being that polite or friendly. I just said "uh huh", no "your welcome" or eye contact or smile or anything like that.

So what can I learn from this?
Sometimes girls want you to do stuff for them and give you perfect opportunities, maybe. She went more out of her way by staying behind me and waiting than I did to hold open the door for a split second. And we don't even know each other. Will girls work to present opportunities for people to do things for them or to just interact with them? Well I'm sure it depends on who the girl is and her personality and what her relationship is with the person and how much she needs social interaction.

But do all girls find some kind of special meaning when guys open the door for them?
I don't know. I think one time I heard one girl say that she didn't. I guess they are all different.
It takes a lot of thought to try and get some insight in to life from this experience. But, this does give me a new appreciation for a quote a friend of mine said once about girls.
"Don't try to understand them, just accept them." I think that this is one of the times where I can accept not knowing. I don't need to understand everything about women and I probably can't. I do need to understand how my words and actions influence them, and do what I can to be a positive influence or at least not a negative one. Then I can understand how to be accepting.


I'll look back at this years from now and see at how ignorant I was. I might laugh but I hope I don't realize that I haven't learned anything new.

Writing

I like to write a lot. I don't feel like being elegant or using fancy words right now.

My experience writing goes back to when I was a young boy. When my mom got a computer, I would go on it and write stories. I think I was 7 or 8 years old. When I was in second grade, I got in trouble for writing bad stories.
When I was 12 and 13, I would write short stories. I wrote hundreds of short stories during that time in my life. I was very depressed and hopeless about life, and it was a way for me to get out of all that. I remember writing stories that were dark and they described my feelings.
The amazing thing is how now that I look back at those stories I see the metaphorical significance. I didn't think about it or understand it at the time, but I see that they were exactly what I was feeling and dealing with. I won't go into them though because it's depressing and nobody wants to hear about that. I'll just say that writing really has a way of showing us what is really in our minds and even our hearts.

I took a long break from getting involved in writing. I went to work at a summer camp this summer. I started a journal. I didn't really know how it was going to work out for me. I started doing this because I decided that I wanted to get the most out of the experience and to grow as much as I could from the beginning. As it turns out my writing really did help me. It helped me to keep track of the different things that I was learning, and to remember the lessons that I've learned. Some things, I probably would not have learned if I was not writing. This is because when I write, it forces me to think over things which helps me see things that I would not have seen had I not thought critically about stuff.
For example, when I write my emotions and stuff, it helps me to understand myself better. Sometimes when I'm feeling bad and I don't know why, the only way to figure it out is to write it all down and analyze it all. Often times I find that what I thought was wrong. Like for instance I thought that my bad feelings had come from that someone else had wronged me, but that was not the case. I usually find out that my problem comes from my own flaws or messed up and limited perspective. That is why I like writing, it makes it easier for me to be honest with myself so I can get rid of bad stuff and become a better person.

I think that God gave us writing. I think that God had in mind for me to become a writer. A co-worker of mine that I worked most closely with this summer was a writer as well. I learned a lot from him and he really helped me to be more committed to writing and inspired me to do it more. I am pretty sure that God set that up. My pastor is also a writer, and I talk with him regularly to exchange ideas and talk about life and spiritual things. My interest in the history of the United States has also fed my desire to write. The founding fathers used writing as a tool to create this nation.

When God gave Moses the ten commandments, He actually wrote them down. You'd think that God wouldn't have any need for writing because everything He says is perfect the first time He says it. But He still wrote down the ten commandments. So there must be another reason to write things down instead of just saying them. Obviously one of those reasons is so other people don't forget exactly what you said. Also it is so that other people can know exactly what you said without actually being there when you said it.

I think that writing is just like speaking, but it allows for us to be a lot more involved in what we are saying. I definitely write way more than I talk or say things out loud. I like it that way, because I can be more clear and exact.

Francis Bacon said in his essay "Of Studies"
"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man."

That's cool.
But now that I think of it... did Jesus ever write? We don't have anything he wrote. Maybe he only needed to read because there wasn't anything he needed that wasn't already written down? He was 100 percent centered on the word of God and he didn't need to write anything other than that. But maybe he just had really good memory. He did memorize scripture. He prayed so I'm sure he was sure of his thoughts after praying or reading scripture. That's a thought.

What is the value of education?

What is the value of education? When I was in elementary school I did not understand the value of education. It was hard for me to grasp the reason for these adults to make me work just to make marks on a paper that will get thrown in the trash anyway. I was told that it was all because it would help me to get a good job, and that was just something I wasn't interested at the time. I am in college now, and since then I've done lots of thinking.

I've come to realize that education is vitally important, central even, to sustain our functioning society and to keep our culture alive. There are a few points about the value of education that I want to bring up.

1. Education is required for freedom and equality.
Thomas Jefferson wrote
"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree."
I think that he was write when he wrote this. People need to be education about the principals about freedom and equality in order for them to function. The only reason we have our ideals now is because throughout history they have been tested and passed on from generation to generation by education. In America one of our greatest ideals is sovereignty of the individual over himself and his property. You can see that in the framework our of nation, with the shadow of a free market capitalist system, and the bill of rights. Unfortunately we have gone out of that framework that emphasized liberty by taking the leash off of our government. We've allowed this to happen because we have not been educated not to do so.
George Washington said
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
If we would just take this knowledge from our first president and be educated, we would have a much better idea of what is going wrong with America. We would then be able to take steps in the right direction to heal our land.

2. Good education is a gift from God, and it can help us to serve Him better.
When Jesus walked the earth, he was a teacher. Jesus commanded his disciples to make more disciples. Even now the Holy Spirit teaches people spiritual things through the Bible. Without God being our educator, people would never become spiritually mature. Solomon prayed to God for wisdom, and now we have the Proverbs. The beginning of Proverbs has a lot to to say about seeking wisdom and knowledge.
(Proverbs 20:15) There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.
The reason that I said that education can help us serve God better can be explained by the parable of the talents. I'm not going to write it all here but just like the talents, we can be good stewards of our education, which will then probably it so we are entrusted with more responsibility and increase our scope of influence. That way we can get more done, and serve God better.

3. Education can increase our effectiveness in all areas of life.
This is pretty obvious. People go to college to be more effective workers and get paid more.
But education isn't just about getting a good job. It is about bettering ourselves and becoming more aware of reality. For example, when a parent teaches their kid about the consequences of right and wrong behavior, that kid is being educated. Parents need to be educators of their children.
All throughout our lives we are being educated whether we like it or not. But this is a good thing. Even better, we have to choice to actively try to become more educated. That is why I write, it helps me to learn much more from my daily experiences, because it requires me to think about it and sort it all out.
So basically all good education supplies us with knowledge and experience to become more aware of truth. The more we are aware of reality, the less we are subject to manipulation through deception, which in effect denies power to those with ill will.
My conclusion is that, if everybody could just teach the next generation to seek to be educated and to seek wisdom and truth, the world would be a freer place, there would be a lot less suffering and wrong doing. And without less education, of course, the scales would tip in the opposite direction.

I think that is a decent explanation of the value of education, but what do I know?

Family Value

In the beginning of this month I went on a 17 hour drive to spend time with family in another state. I got to spend time with my best friend, and enjoy the company of cousins that I have not seen in years. As a result of my two week journey all the funds I earned working the last two months were depleted. But that was a small price to pay, because family is so vitally important.
It is because of the relationships that we have with each other. I could have not driven anywhere and seen just as many people, but it wasn't just because they are people. It is because they are the people with whom I have a family relationship. Part of the balance of life is that we maintain our relationships with our family. From playing video games with one of my cousins for 7+ straight hours, to watching another of my cousins neuter a cat, all of the time that I spent was very valuable.
I got to spend a day with my uncle a week before he died. I sat with him in the ICU while he was on the respirator for several hours when no one else was there. I never to to talk to him that much before, but I got to tell him all about my life and my ambitions, and where I feel that God is taking me. I sang songs in his room. On my 8 hour trip to the medical facility where he was staying, I stopped to get gas. I saw a sign for a church that said they were meeting at 7:30 that Monday night, and it was 7:25. So after getting gas, after having driven for 6 hours already, I went into that building and met the pastor there before they started. It was actually 3 full gospel churches that had come together to focus on and pray for their youth and schools. I waited for about 90 minutes, listened to all the stuff they said that didn't really pertain to me, and when they were about to leave I got up and had them all pray for my uncle. I already knew at that time that he was probably going to die, my prayer was just that he would be conscious so that he could get peace from my visit and me telling him how well me and my family were doing. And he was conscious when I visited him, and he could hear and understand what I was saying.

But I don't even value family as much as I should. All the time I spent and work I put into my relationships with family is not adequate. Just like anything we have, family relationships are something we are responsible for in making the most out of them to serve the God who has entrusted them to us. We have to be good stewards of all of our relationships, so that means we have to value the people that we have relationships with. If we are to love them, we have to value our friends and family more than we value ourselves. That is something I still have to work on.