Chapter 6. Our many life journeys

Chapter 6.       Our many life journeys

       a.       family

       b.       friends

       c.       school

       d.       work

       e.       personal

this is a sample of my Journeys in 2012

We can create our journeys.  

The people around us also can and do often create our journeys.  Our family and friends can create our journeys.  Our cultures, societies from national to state to local, can create our life journeys.  Our companies where we work and everyone involved in them can create our life journeys.  The towns or cities we life in, the neighborhoods we live in can create our life journeys.

Are all the journeys that others create for us positive?

Many to most probably are or have been.  My only concern is are they really the best journeys for us to help us live our own best lives? I have learned to accept to question what any majority credits as right, correct, the necessary way of doing things.  It is part of my nature.  Because of this I question everything that others try to make me do simply because they do or believe that we should do them.

Does this mean that they are all manipulative or negative for us?

No I don’t believe that.  It is too general of a statement and I do not accept absolutes or generalities as being consistently true.

Most people in our lives do not sit around plotting how to control, exploit or handle our lives to their benefit.  In most cases the decisions and plans they make for us are created to help us at times when we probably are not ready or capable of designing our own journeys.

I can imagine scenes in every household where there are young babies who have discovered that they can move on their own.  They can get from the side of a chair to a couch on the other side of the living room on their own.  They no longer have to picked up by their mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers or sisters to move from one side of the room to another.  They are mobile.  They can crawl.

Up go the floundering arms stretched to the sky with the hands dangling loosely from the wrists as if they were attached to puppet strings from above.  One clumsy step at a time the tiny adventurer moves towards a distant target, the other rim of the great canyon.  Thus begins the early personal journeys.  The outcomes, the destinations may a chair, a couch, a table, mom or dad.  Aiming towards objects, things does not bring encouragement though we may internally motivate ourselves.  Aiming towards family members brings great joy, encouragement and support through cheers and coaching. 

idea         describe samples of each kind of journey

When we grow old enough to enter school, join sports teams or scouts we begin to experience journeys that are mostly created by others.  Teachers, principals and school boards establish the routes, the stopping points, the required knowledge and lessons to be learned.  Coaches set the rules and train us in their ways of playing baseball, football, basketball or soccer.  Our scout leaders pass on the rules passed onto them from the central scouting offices of how we are to act and journey as scouts, what we are going to do and mostly what we must learn to be good scouts.

In each of these cases the basic journeys, or more likely, the guided tours, are each based on experience and the overall goals of those in charge whether parents, teachers, coaches or scout leaders.  Within those tours are opportunities for our personal journeys as long as we reach the required tour destinations and do not disrupt the prepared trip along the way.

idea -                  provide positive and negative and neutral examples

A negative guided tour in education is demonstrated by the theme and message of Harry Chafin’s famous song: Flowers Are Red and Green.  In the story of the song a little boy is convinced by his controlling teacher that the proper way to draw flowers is by making them red and green.  Though the boy objects in the beginning saying that the flowers can be any and all colors the teacher continually strives to control him.  Eventually he gives in and becomes one of the pack on the “bus tour” called school.  Later when his family moves to another city he comes across a teacher that sees life as an unlimited rainbow of color by then the little boy only can see flowers as red and green.

That song and story demonstrates an example a the worst type of “guided tour” that a teacher can take a student on.

I remember as a young adult seeing a child who was being taken on, what appeared to my 22-year old mind, a very limited and rigid “guided tour” through her very young life.  She was maybe 3 or 4 years old.  She was the grandchild of my first set of in-laws best friend and neighbor.  Picture this scene.  We are sitting in the formal living room in a very large home in a very exclusive neighborhood.  The room is filled with a life collection of nicknacks displayed on varied mahogany colonial style tables or in similar glass enclosed cabinets.  The little girl is sitting in a very rigid position with her hands very carefully placed on top of each other in her lap.  She is wearing a pretty, frilly, party dress.  Her is combed perfectly, not one hair out of place.  She is sitting motionless, staring forward, not batting an eye lid, like a life-size doll.  All this while her mother is talking to her grandmother for several minutes.

The little girl is not a child, a grand daughter.  She is a flesh and bone collectable required to be quiet and motionless until her mother says it is time to leave to go home.

That is an example of the type of negative “guided tour” created by a parent that I believe destroys our children.

Being yelled at.  Being screamed at.  Being abruptly, physically forced into a batting position the coach wants the young batter to stand in is an example of another bad “guided tour”.  Where is the love of the game?  Where is the fun and joy of learning and playing a sport, a game?

Punch in at 7:45 am.  Take only your prescribed breaks exactly at the times determined by your boss or union steward.  Do your repetitive work that some day soon a machine will do more effectively, that actually an animal could be trained to do.  Punch out at 5:15 pm and leave for home only to repeat the same routine 5 to 6 days a week, 50 weeks a year for 30 to 40 weeks.  That is an example of a bad work “guided tour”.

Those are examples of “bad” “guided tours” yet many guided tours are probably highly beneficial.  They save time.  They save materials and guarantee more profits.  They often save lives.  They make our work and lives easier.

Recall sample guided tours your parents have taken you on when you were growing up.

Reminisce about some guided tours that your teachers took you on.

Remember some of those guided tours your coaches took you on.

Revisit some of those guided tours at work.

provide benefits, lessons, growth from each

Look over your lists of guided tours.  What were some of the benefits you gained from them?  Were there any that were examples that were limiting, controlling, manipulative?  What were the negatives?  Were you hurt by any of them?

Periodically I believe we need to re-examine our lives to decide how our life travel is going.  I am proposing that you review your past, present and the future you would like to have happen to discover how much of it is in your control.  Then examine the parts that are not in your control to see how they are benefiting you and your family.  

Finally, begin to plan to take control of your life travel 

from today onward.