Starving children

I often learn things in a representational way. It is called so many things, but the best way I can describe it is metaphorical. As a teacher, one is concerned a great deal with how people learn. It is often pointed out that hunger is a huge stumbling block to learning. It is believed that many children need to be taught so that a cycle or way of life below potential can only be escaped by reaching these little minds and inspiring them, but this cannot be done if their mind is preoccupied with hunger. It is sort of like a child needs to eat properly in order to learn the things that are needed to be able to live the sort of life they are destined to live.

This is true for me, too. I learned something, but right now I already forgot because I am dealing with a teary daughter who "needs" her favorite toy to be happy.

Now, everyone needs me. I will continue this later...

Ok, it is later, it has been weighing on me how I have ALWAYS been concerned with helping others, and it works well, when a family supports your efforts. I have almost always compared a marital foundation to a school where one learns charity and selflessness without fear. You place the other above what you want knowing that they will "have your back".

It is beautiful, really. But, when for some reason you are not cared for in return it is like the starving child in the classroom who appears to be a bad student because their need is not being met.

Recently, in a class, various learning styles were mentioned and instantly, I thought of the "love languages" book and the ordeals I am having with my youngest daughter. Without disclosing who, there is a child in class who seems to be a problem child, so I asked why they were always acting out, if they even knew. It was disclosed to me that this child finds sitting and listening to books boring. It starts out fun, but goes too long. Basically, it is an attention problem. In this case the child is not starving for food, but is plagued with another enemy to being able to learn and absorb the feast of information being presented.

There is an enemy within our family that is keeping us from progressing. I have not figured out this "elephant in the room" but, I have seen evidence of it enough to know that it is hindering me from everything I could be, like in the army... sorry I just think of that song, "be all that you can be...in the arrrrmy". But, perfect analogy, the army plays a surrogate family meeting individuals needs so that they can focus on things that matter.

As a child once myself, my everything was taken care of by loving parents. I think of a song "Teach me to Walk in the Light" there is soooo much to that. The way that faith can be developed and grow is by removing doubt and fear, and having a safe home when our needs are met. I suspect that is why my son is such a "home body" he knows that he will be cared for at home.

I could go on and on, but I merely wanted to explain the likeness and how I applied it to deduce a thing I know is hindering me,  although I cannot know what it is, I know what it isn't.

Who doesn't love the rest of the story?

There has been a noticable trend toward reality or "enlightenment". It is like everyone feels like there is a man behind the curtain who needs to be exposed.

When I was a kid, it was so popularly referred to as "the rest of the story" as revealed by Paul Harvey. It was a very common thing to expect that "the story"always had an extra plot twist or explination beyond what was commonly told. This shifted in the manner the apetite was fed. Next, everyone sought the true story though what was called reality TV. Next came social media,  or "fair and balanced news", but every manifestation has a similar root. The majority wanted to know the whole story as it really was.
I noticed a form of addiction or flocking uncontrollably to individuals who inspire trust, while the individual feels oppressed by the weight of such trust peroodically.
At a summer camp as a teen, we made t-shirts that said, "free to be me". I often felt embarrassed to wear such a declaration on my shirt. Although, it was fine for others to be themselves, no one HONESTLY wanted me to be who I really was. I thought so much aboit this as I watched popular entertainment like the movie "Moana" where the young heroine sets out to discover who she really is, opposed to who she is meant to be.

Majority rules, right?
Well, if so, then ought you be yourself if you are of a minority in your views?

It always ends with Santa

So, to keep in line, ha ha, with the eternal round thingy,  I will start with Santa, too. I asked my daughter if she believed that Santa Claus was a man who lived on the north pole and delivered presents to every child in the whole world on Christmas. She is a very thoughtful and intelligent girl, but, despite what might seem otherwise she fully and unequivocally believes it all. So, she also believes that I have super powers and am beautiful. I sure wish I could live life with her perspective! It made me again wonder how I could know anything, and what if anything other than things we choose to believe could ever be trusted.

I had been taught stories from the Bible and they had been a great help to me. I believed them fully as I had no reason to doubt them. And really, what a refirmation they were to what I want to know and if one does believe that a young inexperienced boy took on a goliath and won,it would be remarkable evidence of how mighty and strong God is. I loved the stories of Jesus in the new testiment, like the one where the public majority wanted to stone a woman to death, but Jesus stood up for her and said the profound heoric words of "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Later, someone claimed factually, that no such event ever took place or could have even possibly been witnessed to be recorded in a book hundreds of years later. But, to contradict that I also heard someone defend Bible stories as true whether or not they were factual. True? In a lesson I recently had on honesty, instantly a recollection of one Paul H. Dunn came to mind. He was a general authority of my church who was released from his duties because he told false stories. That is serious. It was not so much that the stories were false, but they were told as if they had been his own. In his defense, he claimed that same thing that it mattered not that the stories were true as it did that they taught hard to conceptualize things, like Jesus' parables. Isn't this the same thing as teaching our children about love for one another through the fairy tale of a little fat man with magical powers who visits good children with Gifts at Christmas. If I had ever resented being taught such things I would never have taught them to my children.

So what I am really trying to get at is that I love indpiring stories if they are factual or not, and although I may doubt the ability to know the truths of them, I accept that perhaps some things are only to be known through a choice to believe them.

Die Hard Lake Lover

I was thinking about things like the time I was afraid to disect a pig in biology class cause I could not cut the flesh at first, but after a bit I volunteered my services to others who had difficulty cutting the skull to see the brain.

A song comes to mind, ofcourse, "The first cut is the deepest.."  (or "the first step you take is the longest one...")

It is a truth that I have come across often in how goodness becomes evil. An obvious choice to do bad would never work. But, through constant little things, one eventually becomes ensnared. It is more so cumulative than doing sonething instantly recognized as horrendous. Gavin, my son, taught me that with his little piece of "lie yarn" one afternoon.

I got to thinking about terrible things that at first are practically impossible, but once accepted become easy. Like ruining a diet or walking on broken glass. Hence I mention the movie "Die Hard".

I also remember often swimming in lake Huron at Forester Park in port Sanilac. The rocks hurt your feet at first, until eventually all feeling was numbed by the fridgid water. How on earth did we ever swim in that water? It is alot like my daughter, Mary Anne who takes long baths in water I would not even like to touch cause it is offensively cold.

The secret is the same old addage applied here, dive in. Now, mind you it is a shock to the system, most notably the brain, but once done "the water is fine" and in this case the gradual process of aclimitizing only lengthens the period of shock. Easier to bear in smaller increments but when you have incentives to swim and a limited amount of time, just get over it and take the plunge.

I was thinking of this is true for everuthing that I know, it is likely true for the borders  that no one crosses out of fear or lack of incentive. I am directly refering to walking on glass or hot coals or anytjing that causes an unpleasant sensation. Maybe once you just do it you become numb to it so that it is fine. Like a taste or smell of something that your brain might not send you any messages about because you just ignored it.

C. S. Lewis made an interesting comment about pain being like a megaphone, so it makes sense that turning off such a loud warning like pain is unwise. I think of the girls in cross-country in high school who all took pain killers, but I refused because along with those constant pain warnings that come from running so fast over a long distance, they would be shutting off the ability to hear a twisted ankle screaming out to stop or something. I just always felt like we got messages for a reason and painkiller is probably not a good thing to mess with.

I am reminded again of swiming at Forester. My dad used to tell me to watch out for the Lamprey Eels. The visibility was terrible and the water so cold one would never feel them attach. So, he would recommend checking our legs for them before toweling off. I was terrified! He described them as little black snake things that had a circle mouth of teeth to attach to your leg.

Along those lines, I always had natural childbirth, no because I was a wonderwoman or anything to orove strength. Infact,  at one point I was nearly at a,bresking point and I asked the anesthesiologist again to describe how pain was removed. He explained that his super long needle was inserted into my spinal column and if I jerked or moved it could paralyze me. I preferred alot of immediate pain to risking a paralytic life.

The moral is: Be brave. Dive in.

Being mormon in Utah is NOT like being Baptist in the southern US

What the heck happened to this very long post none of which I remember?

"I do not want this moment to be lost in an endless sea of time."