In my life I have come to realize that we all have different paths that we can take. From the moment you are aware of your surroundings you start to create a mind set of how you will choose your path. I know many will say that at a young age you can’t do that. I ask you why can’t you?
Sure the argument that most will give me is because your parents tell you what to do. And to some point I agree with that, when you are young. However, you still have your own mind and thought processes. Your parents may try and try to show you how to share your toys, but inside you your mind is made up not to. Then when you get older and become a teenager, well you no longer have to share. You decide that your parents were wrong to ever make you share a damn thing, and you won’t do it anymore.
On the other hand, all those times that you were told to share could have also made you understand what sharing really was. That you see as you get older that sharing is a good thing. In that case you then must make a choice as to how far that share is good or bad. You then could choose that share everything is great and that even if someone takes advantage of it, it’s ok. Or you could think that sharing is a good thing, but to be careful of those that are one sided in their sharing with you.
The point is that, you started to think that way when you were still very young. Truly, if your parents were the other way and told you to never share, you still could choose the different paths.
That path that you choose will take you to many forks as you go down the road of life. Sometimes that path will guide you to a life of hard choices, and some will be a breeze. What many don’t realize is that sometimes that hard path is the one that gets to ahead in life. It’s the path that knocks you back and forth. Gives you the cuts and bruises that reminds you later just how hard you worked to get where your at.
That easy path, however is the way to bigger hurts and disappointments. The problem is that those hurts and disappointments come far down the road. It really suckers you in deeper and deeper with comfort, false joys, and an empowerment that makes you feel better than everyone else. But in the end, you have deep hurts and are unsure of what you have.
I’m not saying that the hard road won’t have great times with many joys and comforts. Heck, sometimes these to roads intersect each other throughout your life. And there are also resting periods on both paths too. This is why it can sometime be very hard to know what path you are on.
Here is where this gets a little tricky to say how a person will be on either path. Just as we all get to choose the path we decide to follow, we also have a choice as to how we react to the paths. Personally this is where I tend to take the, “Oh well, shit happens.” approach. This approach pretty much says that whatever happens along that path, I choose to let it go and roll down my back like water. It means that I won’t let bad things ruin who I am to family, friends, or anyone else. I will stay my course and try not to hurt others. But as recent times have shown, that isn’t always possible.
The other choice of thinking is to let everything affect me, become the victim of my bad decision or how others see me. This type of thinking really only hurt the person that allows bad events and choices to hurt affect them. Sadly, this is also how many of the younger generation thinks today. They have an entitlement mind set that means everything can offend them and hurt. However, I also have seen this in some Boomer and Gen X’s also.
My point to this whole post is that we as a nation are in the middle of two groups of people. One that knows our history and accepts that we have done bad things in the past. The other, knows the same thing but wants to tear all traces of those bad things down and create a new country. The problem is that this second group doesn’t just want to remove the history of the bad, they want to forget about it. They want to remove it from our life as if it never happened. They want to make it seem as if the easy path with all it’s comfort will come if the past never existed.
Sorry, but that isn’t how it works. If we forget the past, then we will repeat it. It is already happening now. When you see this liberal white people kneeling down and kissing the boots of black people, they have both forgotten what our history showed was unjust. That is why they also forced the removal of products like Aunt Jemima. It was to remove the fact that a black woman at a time when racism was extremely strong in the country was able to become a national model and famous person. It goes against the narrative of being oppressed today.
In truth, if we truly want a better nation today, we must embrace both the good and bad. We must understand where we came from to see where we want to be. Without that, we are doomed. And really I am afraid it may have us end up in the second civil war if we remove our past.
