An Irish Perspective Of Some Of Our Problems.

[Eamonn]

Have you heard about the Irish Boomerang ?

It doesn't come back, it just sits around and sings about how much it wants to.

How often do we no matter what position we hold sit around and moan and groan about how much we want to see things get better or return to past glory? And then do nothing?

A Aer Lingus spokesman is quoted as saying:

What we are doing is in the interest of everybody,bar possibly the consumers.

How much time and effort do we put into doing things that are in the best interest of everyone except our youth members?

JFK, is quoted as saying:

We don't want to be like the Leader in the French Revolution who said there go my people I must find out where they are going so that I can lead them.

George Harrison has a song that says if you don't know where you are going any road will take you there. If we don't set goals and help other people to set goals as well as making them accountable for meeting these goals - Aren't we just wasting our time?

W.B. Yeats is quoted "Education is not filling a bucket it is lighting a fire."

Something to think about at the next Board Of Review?

I love the old Hymn How Great Thou Art. I have met some who have changed it to "How Great I Art." To these poor souls I would tell the tale of the young girl who went to Father Healy of Cork, and sadly made her confession:" Father I fear that I'm guilty of the sin of vanity." She confessed. "What makes you think that?" Asked her father-confessor. "Because each morning when I look in the mirror, I can't help thinking how beautiful I am."" Never fear, colleen," was the reassuring reply. "That isn't a sin; it's only a mistake."

Eamonn

[Laurie]

If we don't set goals and help other people to set goals as well as making them accountable for meeting these goals - Aren't we just wasting our time?

 

Very well said Eamonn! I heartily agree; there is nothing to be gained by talking about, thinking about, or wishing for something to be done when we can get up, learn what we need to do, plan it out and talk it out just enough to set those goals, communicate those goals, and then get moving to meet them/help each other meet them.

[Proud Eagle]

The worst problem is not knowing wear you want to go. You obviously can't choose a path if you don't even know where it is you want to end up.

 

I have to some extent been faced by this problem of late. I realized I really have no capacity for figuring out what I want to do. I was always used to figuring out what I needed or had to do, and then how to do it. That is pretty simple. Then all of a sudden, life stops having a clear path. There is no longer a graduation plan to follow. Instead there are hundreds degrees, thousands of colleges, and an infinite number of careers to choose from. When people ask me what I want to do, I really don't have clue how to answer them.

 

When I was young I used to tell people I wanted to be a doctor. Since then I have discovered that I don't like blood and other doctor related things. (Plus it would be almost impossible for someone in my position to ever get into med school. Once I could have set out on that path and made it, but that path isn't even on the same continent any more.)

 

When I was a bit older I told people I either wanted to be a astronaut or a garbage man. The astronaut was the dreamer in me. I wanted to do something exciting, to be some sort of hero, and to go where no one has gone before. The garbage men was based solely on the fact that even in the worst of weather the local garbage men always seemed to be smiling and happy.

 

Now I don't really know. I went through a phase where I thought I might be some great inventor or scientist or engineer. I went through a phase where I thought I might be some great political leader and make change for the better. I even once thought it would be cool to be some great military hero. Now I don't know. I feel like I am lost in the wilderness and that everything I do to find my way just gets me more lost. I keep thinking maybe I have found an answer, but then the closer I get, the more it seems to be just an illusion.

 

I guess in the back of my mind I always expected God to somehow let me know what I was supposed to do. That someday it would just be clear that "this is what I need to do". Now I don't think I will ever know for certainty what God or anyone else intended for me, unless it is to spend my life searching for direction, reason, and purpose without ever finding answers but instead finding more questions.

 

To make matters worse, at just the moment a person if faced with such concerns, all the familiar things in life go away. Friends go off to other places leaving you without even so much a a familiar person to eat lunch with. Favorite activities and clubs are left behind. Even the church changes. No longer is there a familiar parish with familiar people, and customary ways of doing things, but instead there is a drab subterranean concrete interfaith center with new ways of doing things and more people you don't know. The cozy home town where everyone seems to know someone who knows everyone else, where you know what the best shoe store and Chinese restraint are without question, and where you feel at home, is replaced by a great metropolitan area full of road rage filled drivers and so many people that it is impossible to even know the names of all the neighborhoods, let alone the people that live in them. Family is left behind only to be seen or spare weekends and heard from on the telephone. Extended family formerly seen every couple of weeks is now seen perhaps twice a year at major holidays. Almost everything friendly, familiar, and comforting, is replaced by something antiseptic, cold, and unknown.

 

Then of coarse about this time things start to happen that can make a person question core beliefs. You start to wonder about your politics and religion. You start to think that your conception of reality (which seemed troubled enough before) is nothing but a fictitious Utopian ideal. Then of coarse you begin to study some subject of interest (political science), where you think perhaps you can make a difference, only to discover that the tide is against you and growing stronger.

 

I for one have little hope for myself. I no longer expect to do great things. I don't expect to be remembered by history. I doubt I can even make much of difference in the unseen workings of life. I don't expect riches or a life filled with pleasant diversions. I also don't have much confidence that even if any of my ideas and ideals are right, that I shall long hold them uncorrupted and undiluted. I also have little hope for much of anything else I am a part of. I don't see much hope in the future of America, or any other nation now on the earth. The politics and philosophy that I think hold the greatest promise are losing too many battles, and I think have already lost the war, though there will be many battles yet. I don't have much hope in the institutions of religion, for all seem to be becoming week, or fanatical to the extreme, and the followers are beginning to go astray. So the present seems bleak, and the future far bleaker to me.

 

Yet despite all this, I do not give in to utter despair. I have hope because I trust that in the end God's Will shall be done. I know that even through what is bad, God can find a way to bring good. I also trust that there is much that I do not know or understand, and that perhaps what I see as a bad path will in the end turn out to be a good one.

 

(This message has been edited by Proud Eagle)(This message has been edited by Proud Eagle)

[Eamonn]

My Dear Proud Eagle,

I can only hope that you are not as depressed as your posting.

Sure things change, people come into our lives and move away. Some just down the road, some to a better place. While we mourn our loss, we must take stock and celebrate what they have given to us.

Many if not most of us have stood at the cross roads of indecision. Not knowing which road to take. At times the reason why we end up there is a result of past bad decisions or bad choices. We could sit back and lick our wounds while we wait for a sign.

The signs are there, but don't wait for a flash of lightning or burning bush. The Good Lord is there next to you whispering in your ear. It takes a little work to hear what He is saying. He will work with you and help you on your way. But the choice is yours. I don't think that you have got this far without his help.

Was it just by chance that you became a Scout?

Was it just an accident that you became an Eagle Scout. You could have walked away from this program at any time. But you are still here.

Sometimes the goals that we need to set for ourselves don't need to be that big. There have been times when things have been overwhelming and I have sat on the side of the bed thinking how nice it would be to just jump back into bed and pull the covers over my head. I have sat there thinking what to do? -What to do? The goal I set was to put my socks on.

My past bad choices and mistakes are now looked upon as part of me being me, in fact my real education. I celebrate my good choices and give thanks for them. I have no idea what life would be like without the love of my family. All my family, my wife and son in this house and others all over the world. We don't need to see each other or speak to each other to know how much we care and love each other. The seeing and talking is a bonus. Both my parents have passed away yet I still bask in the love that they gave me. I still live each day doing my best to make them proud. I'm raising my son following the blue print that they left behind.

While I love my church and Cherish my religion. I don't need the walls, the priest or rites to lead me down the right path. These things help and I do lean on them, still I like to think that I have a good relationship with the Good Lord.

I take great pride in my heritage. My Grand-Father was a part of the Easter uprising in 1916. My Parents left Ireland with no money and were grateful to England and the English for the opportunity to work hard and prosper. I love the United States Of America, the greatest land on this good earth. Not just because of its' many splendid features. But because of the way it treats the people who live here. Freedom isn't just another word, it is a living growing meaning force.

When you go to put your socks on tomorrow you might want to think about the words of Oliver Goldsmith:

"Our Greatest glory is not in never falling,but in rising every time we fall."

Eamonn

[Proud Eagle]

You offer good sound advice, and I thank you for it.

 

I am by no means as depressed as I sound. That was just sort of a cummulative list of discouraging things from the past year and a half or so that are somewhat generic. Like anything else there are depressing days and then there are uplifting days. Then there are days that have some of both and other days that are just sort of bland and have neither. I suppose that has always been the case with life. The prime challenge is to keep moving even on the bad days. That is far easier when you have what I (not on original concept, I borrowed it from some one but I don't remember who) call a support network in place. That support network contains all the various supporting relationships with friends and family. (For these supporting relationships to work, at least for me, there has to be some sort of interaction, otherwise it really isn't much of a relationship.) It also covers our relationship with God, our faith, and various religious activities. Further, we have the ability to self support when we have goals, dreams, or ambitions in mind. When any of those thigns are missing it seems to have a bit of a negative impact, least for me. When most of them are missing, as has sometimes seemed the case the last 18 months or so, it can cause some problems, at least for me. It becomes easier to fall down, and harder to get back up again. (I read once that the Army special forces training includes a section on evaluating the ability of the individual to function without a support network. They have the person do what seems to be a never ending serious of tedious tasks with no apparent purpose or goal, and they do it alone and cut off from human contact so that they can see what happens to them.)

 

Anywase, hope springs eternal, whenever I am feeling down something always seems to come along to brighten things up a bit, like the unusually pleasant (though allergy inducing) weather.

 

Just when it starts to seem that I can't tell the difference between one day and the next, something different comes along like a camporree or a conclave to change things up a bit.

 

Ultimately, however, most of my problems seem to come back to one core problem. I don't know where I am going or what I am really doing. Since I don't know what I certainly can't even begin to figure out why I am doing anything or how to go about getting to the destination. I have used every method I know to determine the way to go, and none seem to really stand out as holding any more promise than the others. Every so often I manage to scratch a posibility off the list as I figure out that I am not good at something, or don't like something, or I am just not the type of person that would be best at something else, but at the rate I am going, I doubt I will ever get that list of possibilities down to one choice. So, I suppose I will have to go ahead despite all my doubts. In the end I will have to choose something to stick with, and if it is the right thing, well great, and if it is the wrong thing, I guess there isn't much that can be done about that.