Tag Archives: growing up

Respect In Proper Proportions

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Some of us are born leaders, some are born followers, most of us are in between sharing traits from each end of the spectrum. Knowing when to follow, when to lead, and when to follow your own advice make us the individuals we are. Determining what is our correct choice for each situation is important to our happiness.

Leading is perhaps the diciest undertaking of the three choices. You determine an action, and start going in that direction. You hope that most people around you will follow you. If it is a reasonable thing you are trying to do, it is likely that some of the people around you will follow your lead.

When people go their own way, it is a one person decision. Going your own way may mean you have a bigger priority at the moment that you want to follow to its end. Or it may mean you are making a poor decision.

The easiest and most difficult undertaking is to become a follower. Followers once they decide to follow, follow blindly. It is almost as if one becomes an extension of the leader. What the leader wants and thinks is what followers want and think.

Following can lead to dramatic changes in our behavior,  both positive and negative. A simple example is joining your friends for a soda. That behavior opens the door for other non standard behaviors to be observed by the members of the friends group. Seen often enough even bad behavior can become one of those, everyone is doing it so why not me too excuses we use to justify our actions.

Being too much of a follower is also a self limiting behavior. Self limiting behaviors are behaviors we engage in that over time effect us in a negative way. That effect may be missed opportunity, missed interaction with friends and family, or unknowingly turning away from those people who have your best interest at heart.

How this happens is easily understood through what we think of as typical Teenage behavior. You want to go out and be with your friends on a weekend night. Your parents are resistant to the idea, probably for good reasons which we do not understand being the Teen. What we perceive is our Parents are being too strict, and never want us to have any fun.

Initially we respect our parents wishes and follow their rules. One weekend, for no obvious reason, something happens that makes our Parents desires less important than our own, and those of our friends. We ignore the rules of our Parents and we do exactly what we want, stay out later than we should with our friends.

The next day our Parents are most unhappy, and upon reflection, staying out the night before does not now feel as good as it did last night. From this moment on we either start growing up and take responsibility, or we continue to justify why we were right and our parents are wrong.

What we really did was violate a trust. We have channeled the respect for our Parents over to our Friends. Suddenly, our friends have taken our Parents place at the top of the respect tree. The respect we have for our Parents is below the respect we give our friends.

Of course to us, it feels as if this is exactly as it should be. Our friends are always there for us. They share more of our time than our Parents do, and they are always ready to share the wisdom of their knowledge with us. Our Parents want to stifle us, and keep us from growing up.

Respect is one of our most valuable personal assets, and it needs to be given out carefully. Giving too much respect to people who have little direct interest in our well being is one of the quickest ways to ruin our life and fill the lives of those around us with the problems we cause.

Misdirected respect is wasted respect. Misdirected respect does nothing to improve our life. Misdirected respect only brings eventual conflict and pain. Our poor decision becomes obvious only after it is too late and we have damaged close relationships.

Fortunately most of us grow up and come to understand the tried and true value of giving our respect to those who have or had the most influence in our life. We learn not give respect to people who’s real interest in our life is selfishness in self centered relationship.

Giving more respect to casual people in your life than you do to those who always want the best for you is a major life miss. Respect your Family and close Friends, but give that respect with your eyes open and your brain thinking.

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Growing Up Is Hard To Do

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It is hard growing up when there is no one in your life to help you grow up. There is a change happening so quietly you do not even notice it. When you are trying to grow up on your own, you notice something is not working the way you think it should but you do not know what is wrong or why.

What is wrong is a tough message to hear. It happens to us who had no close by adult role models who we want to be like. What is wrong is you are trying to be an adult using the same tools in the same way you did as a child.

If you read on that sentence will make sense, and you will know what you have to do if you want to be happy and successful as an adult. Until now it did not really matter who you played with. If you hung around with friends who were in trouble often, and you did not do the things they did, they got into trouble, and you did not. If you hung around with people who had no ambition, did as little as possible, and acted up, it did not matter.

choicesYour life away from your home until now was always changing, but you came home to the routine of your life, whatever that may be. Now something is not working, and it does not make sense when you think about, because until now life was good, and it makes no sense all of a sudden.

When you start living on your own, there is no more routine or parents to go home to. What you do in or with your life is your choice, and other than your family, nobody cares whether you live your life well, or trash it completely.

Have you noticed the people you hang around with are getting expensive? They have no plans for their life, and they have little ambition while you want to have a better life than you have up to this point. Having a better life never has entered your friends thoughts. They think life is good just the way it is.

I know you do not think your friends are costing you much, but think about it. How many problems have you had over the last months while with your friends? How many times do you find yourself paying for something for them. I know you don’t think it is much, maybe a coke now and then, but if you watch closely you will see it is a lot more. Also what about the problems in your life that keep popping up? That stupid stuff that should not have happened but it does? Have you noticed your friends are always around when problems happen?

I am sure you have not really noticed, but other people they hang with are worse than they are. The people they hang with that you are starting to know have some pretty bad habits, to doing some things that will get them sent to prison some day, if they have not been in jail or something like it already.

You have to decide where you want your life to go, even if you do not know how to get there. You can no longer hang around with people who’s lives are going nowhere and expect your life to be different. The plain simple boring truth is: “You are who your friends are”, and there is no way around it. If you hang with people who’s lives are going nowhere fast, your life is not changing either except you are getting older. Notice how the people you admire are moving out of your life.

You are who your friends are because you start thinking more like them ever day. You do not notice that you are slipping when you want to move ahead. It is easier and less scary to do what you have been doing and not admit it is not working, and it is your doing. But that is exactly what you need to do. Take responsibility for your life, and the direction it is going. No one else runs your life any longer.

If you want to go nowhere in life, then think I do not know what I am talking about. It is a lot easier than the other choice. The better choice is start making choices that move your life forward. That is a painful choice because you don’t know how. You do not need to know what or how, all you need to do is decide not to. Decide not to hang with friends who have no interest in a better life. Decide not to be with people who want to be children in adult bodies. Make the right choice, and better thing will come your way.

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Teenage frustration and awkwardness

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I found as I was growing up the years between thirteen and my twenties to be very awkward times. I think a lot of teens find this time of their life to be very difficult. I first noticed the change because I enjoyed fighting as a kid. Around the age of thirteen the nature of fighting started to change. Fights were no longer about who was the strongest. Fights were changing to who could hurt the other person more.

The second thing I noticed was I no longer heard I was cute any more. And the things I used to do to get my way were not working so well any more. At nine I could go from door to door asking for something to do for money and people would overpay me for doing the simplest tasks. About the age of twelve or thirteen work started becoming scarce, and the payment for work accomplished started shrinking.

Then I noticed the other kids in school were changing. It was hard to figure out what was changing at first. It was like they were trying harder to be adult, even though none of us had any real idea what being adult really was.

Girls were a problem too during my teenage years. When I was younger than maybe ten, we would all play together and have fun as a group. Slowly us boy and those girls pulled apart from each other and started distancing ourselves apart from one another. About the same time I started noticing there was a distinct difference between myself and girls. Something beyond the obvious physical differences, something that attracted me, and made me feel awkward at the same time.

Thinking of awkward, it was also a time when my body was growing faster and doing things it had never done before. One week I was out playing and having fun, and the next week my bones would hurt and my pants were shrinking. My school never did a good job of explaining this growth spurt to us, not were they very good at explaining I would start to have a sex drive that I would not understand, even though it took center stage in much of my thinking and cause more than a little personal embarrassment in the life of a thirteen year old.

The differences in the way I was being treated by the adults in my world, had a large effect on how and what I thought from moment to moment. I was slowly being introduced to life into the adult world, and I did not know what the rules were. Much of what i took for granted all my life in the way adults in my world responded to me changed. Of course at this age I was internalizing everything, deciding it was somehow my fault.

I think at this point when I started internalizing everything is where many teens get stuck in their lives. This is the time in their life when they start thinking they are nobody, everyone hates them, or they are worthless. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth. What is changing in the life of a teen at this time in their life is everything is changing and no one has bothered to tell you about it. Life rules are changing for you and no one told you.

No matter how awkward, unloved, or useless you may feel, you need to know that these thoughts are what you think people think about you. In fact everyone in your life loves and cherishes you as much as they ever have, but they are getting you ready for the adult world. Your friends if they were not going through the same things themselves would not be changing. In a few years, just as you learned how to walk and talk, you will have the tools you need to live and thrive in the adult world. Be patient, and remember almost everyone feels just like you do even if they act like everything is great, it probably is not…just like you.

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Friendship with a stranger

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There are only the two of us out fishing today. The wind is blowing about ten miles an hour, and the ice fishing hole won’t stay clear for more than twenty or thirty seconds before it is so frozen over I can not tell if I have a bite of not. My hand is cold immediately when I remove my mitten. The water burns my hand when I clean the ice out of the hole.

The old man is retired he tells me. His wife died a few years back and he has nothing better to do than spend his days fishing. He say’s he used to hunt, but he is to old to wander around the woods any more. The shore is only a few hundred yards a way and he can still make that he says.

I do not know the old man, but as we are the only two out ice fishing. It is only natural that we talk with each other. At any other time he would probably ignore me as I am just a kid to him, even though I am the ripe old age of eighteen. The old man asks me what I am doing out here? I tell him that the college is closed today and I would rather be outside here ice fishing than be stuck in my room with my books.

The old man asks me what I am studying and what do I plan to be when I graduate? I tell him I am in my first year, but I plan on going into forestry. He asks me what kind of classes I need to be a Forest ranger, and I am quiet for a few seconds, because I have no clue what the correct answer is. I tell him I am taking some biology classes and then the regular reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The old man say’s he never got past the third grade. He worked as a Rail Roader all his working life, and you did not need much education to do that. He said he made a good wage while he worked, and he is doing okay in retirement. I mention that I had Rail Roaders in my family too. He asks what lines they worked for, and I tell him. He said that he worked for a local line that no longer was in existence. I didn’t recognize the name.

The old man asked me how long I was going to be fishing? I said I was close to being done, it was just no fun today. He looked at his watch and told me we had been on the lake for about fifty-two minutes. He said he was going to call it quits at an hour. Then making conversation he said his car tires were squared from the cold and they would probably stay that way until the cold snap broke. I remembered driving on tires like that. Ten miles of driving and you are still feel the whump, whump, whump of four flat spots where each tire touched the ground, and froze into that shape. You did not go anywhere fast.

I asked him if his car would start, and he said yes, it should. He told me he was getting a little cold and his hands were starting to hurt. I admitted that I had on just about every warm piece of clothing I owned and my knees were getting a little stiff and cold. I would probably have chilblains when I got back to my room and warmed up. He reckoned we were quite the fools for being out on the lake, but it beat anything else there was to do in this small town in the morning. I agreed. Then he asked why wasn’t I in class? I said they closed the campus this morning. There we were two strangers with no common sense. Out ice fishing on a frigid Lake Superior on a fifty degree below zero before the wind chill morning. We both knew one thing for certain. We were alive, and more than a little cold!

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Grateful for Kids running

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If you read my flu post a few days ago, you know I just had my flu shot. I am still feeling a little run down, and really would rather sit around and do nothing. I know in a few days, I would feel I wasted a day when I could have done something worthwhile. I have not done much, but I did go out for a few mile afternoon walk, enjoying the fall flowers that are still out and the warmth of the sun mixed with a cool breeze today.

The park where I walk shares a property line with a middle school. As I was walking a Physical Education Coach was leading his class out for some outside activity before the weather becomes too cold. As I walked up to where he was standing, I stopped and we talked for a few minutes about the kids, differences in generations, and life in general. Sort of a quick comparison conversation of our respective generations.

The kids were supposed to be running around the mile loop as fast as they could, but of course as soon as some of them were what they considered a safe distance from the Coach, their run slowed way down. Some of them were running hard, and some had slowed their run to an ambling walk. I am grateful for seeing these kids do this today, and being able to understand why their running style applies to my life.

In my own life over the years, there have been periods when I went as fast as I could. there were times when I would be wondering why life would not move faster so I could get whatever plan I had set in motion accomplished. There were other times, such as today for example, when a slow walk would suit me just fine. I was in no hurry and there was nothing to rush for. Or really like today, I feel a little run down and slow is about as fast as I care to move.

That is one of the great things about life, as you grow older! You have a bigger base of experience from which to make comparisons with. When I received the very first flu shot that made me feel run down, I was angry that I did this to myself, and I vowed that I would never get another flu shot.

I remember a few years of going without flu shots. During one of them I actually caught a severe case of the flu. The kind of being sick where you feel like you are going to die any second, then you start wishing you would, just so you would quit aching all over? That was the flu I had that year, terrible stuff! Now days, I do not mind feeling a little run down for a day or two, because I know feeling run down for a day or so is not as bad as being in bed for a week, so sick that dying does not feel like such a terrible alternative to the aching.

Now you know what I am grateful for this week. Over the years I have gained the wisdom to know that a little inconvenience is sometimes a better choice than a lot of pain later. Also along with all that gained wisdom of dubious value, I know these situations do not only apply to flu shots.

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Children, guns, gasoline, and responsibility in contrast

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I had an uncle who when he was young, shot another boy with a .22 caliber rifle. The boy was sitting on a fence post, and though the whole story was never made clear, it seems my uncle shot him in the area where the boy sat on. Other uncles in the family occasionally kept their cars on the road by stealing gasoline out of another cars gas tank. There was a joke between them that one of the uncles could tell the grade of gasoline by the way it sounded when he tapped his knuckles on the tank. If someone tried to steal gas from a farmer, and mistakenly filled their car with diesel fuel, well they paid for the fuel, cleaned the barn for a few days, and their car problems from the diesel fuel in their car’s gas tank were usually punishment enough.

On the other side of things, when they were children life was more serious. Many children had serious chores to do. They had to milk cows, clean the barn, and tend the garden. An adult finding a child doing something wrong, generally treated that child the way they would treat their own children. Everyone knew and accepted they deserved what they received as punishment when caught. They also knew they had no one to blame except themselves for what they did. There was little tolerance of blaming others for individual wrongs.

As I was growing up things had changed, but not too much. I remember going out to a close by gravel pit where the teenager’s parked at night. We would look for the old cars where the back doors opened backwards. This meant the door handles were close to each other. While the occupants were busy doing what teenagers did in gravel pits at night, we would tie the door handles together with rope or a coat hanger. Once that was done, the car was fair game to rocking and pushing as we knew the driver could not get out to harm us.

I shot a friend in the thumb with a BB gun when I was about nine. The BB made its way under my friends thumb nail up to the joint and stopped right under his skin. He screamed and yelled for a few minutes and his Mom was pretty upset, and probably scared too. I thought I in serious trouble, but once it was clear I was just trying to shoot a frog he was holding for me and it was not intentional…. Well let me just say I got off pretty easy, considering. Stealing gas was still pretty common when I was a boy. In my neighborhood where I lived if someone had a car, they either had a locking gas cap, or left little gas in the tank over night. Police were rarely called for gasoline thefts.

When I was eight years old, I was old enough and I would go to a boys camp for a month at a time during the summer. I earned my way to camp by selling candy door to door for almost a month in the winter after school and weekends. When I was eleven years old I was old enough to go on ten day canoe trips. I went with twenty or so other eleven to thirteen year olds, and one Adult who was our guide. The canoe trips took place in the wilds between the Minnesota and the Canadian border. We went across the lakes and portages three to a canoe. At sixteen I was off camping alone for days at a time. I owned a few rifles and a pistol in my teens and fired off thousands of .22 caliber rounds while plinking at rocks, cans, and bottles.

Many children today have little exposure to guns other than television and movies. Lovers lane is where sick people hang out waiting for victims. The only outhouse todays children see is at a park or a fair. Children probably rarely if ever hear of a classmate stealing gas, but whole cars being stolen is the norm. I am curious at how much our ideas about what is and is not acceptable have changed in less than half a century. Along with our thoughts on who is responsible when kids do something wrong and, placing the blame somewhere else is okay. I do not think the basic tenants of our lives have changed at all, just the way we think about them.

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