Idols

No, not THAT kind of idols - the ones that you grew up with, the people that you loved reading about, hearing about. The people you aspired to be when you grew up. (Mine was Gandalf.)

Eventually, though, we either become too cynical to have our idols around in our minds anymore, or - which may arguably be worse - we pick up a new book and realize that our favorite authors are killing them off, or changing them. The character is doing something you know in your heart s/he wouldn't do! How dare they!

For your idol has taken on a life of his or her own in your heart, in your mind. Grown into something that is more than the character, something that inspires you to be and become. When that dream dies it takes part of us with it - when we realizes that even our idols can fall, we realize that we can, too, and maybe the world isn't a place filled with opportunities.

Why is it that we can't hang on to that optimism? Why can't we retain the hopes and dreams that our heroes instilled in us? What is it about humanity that makes it so easy to fall, and so difficult to keep going? We need to keep our heroes within us, to always have that image of them prevailing and winning - but we also need to remember that they can fall. And it's okay. They make mistakes - so do we.

We are none of us infallible - all we can do is try to make our heroes proud.

A hiatus.

I know that I haven't been posting - and I'm not quite sure if anybody still reads this thing regardless. Either way, I wonder when people realize what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Does it come gradually? Do you always know what you want to be? Is there some kind of signpost where you simply decide to either acquiesce to what people think you 'should' be, or soldier on in the murky waters of uncertainty, trying to figure out who you are and what you want?

I think most of us don't end up doing what we think we want to do. However... what I want to know is: How many of us end up doing something better than what we'd started out as?

Thoughts.

Children generally come into this world full of good will, innocence, happiness, trust, and faith. Adults are lightened by the presence of children - their overwhelming joy makes us recall what it's like to feel that way. As children grow, they slowly become jaded, bitter, trustless and faithless - most of the time, especially in America.

Why do we call this the process of growing up?

Why does becoming an adult mean that we must lose all inherent joy and faith that we were born with? What is it that makes it perfectly acceptable - and encouraged, even - to destroy the trust that we have in our fellow human beings? If we did not encourage this in our children, if we did not crush their hopes and their belief that they could be anything, imagine what this world could be.

We purposely take perfect creatures that truly believe that they can accomplish the world and demand that they limit themselves. We impose restrictions upon their psyches - you can't be an astronaut. You couldn't be the president. That's a nice dream, hon, but why don't you go to school for something realistic? Why don't you try for something that will pay you enough?

Why do we do this to ourselves and our children? I know that the reality of this world is one that is harsh and demanding, but teaching children that they cannot accomplish all that they believe they can is simply dooming them to repeat our mistakes: trusting no one, believing nothing, and hating ourselves without knowing why.

Another departure from the norm.

Well... maybe not. Psychology also extends to those that are in foster care or in residential facilities; there are a lot of children in this country who don't have a home and don't have a family. Christmas may be spent staring out a window at the cold, just another day, or without being able to get a gift because no one cares. Or perhaps a kid is lucky enough to get placed in a foster home; but raising children, foster or not, is a very expensive endeavor. A lot of parents - again, foster or not - don't have the money to spend on their kids this Christmas.

You can help. Baggage, a foster/adoptive mom, over at Baggage And Bug, wrote an article about a program called "Little Wishes." Go read it - click and help. Make someone's Christmas a little better. You can sort it by category of gifts, by price, whatever you want - it's just an opportunity to help a kid who has a Christmas wish and might not get it without the kindness of strangers.