Finding the Courage.....

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." - Eleanor Roosevelt

First of all, I have to say that this is one of my favorite people in all of American History. I have read her biography and I am proud to say that I share some of her philosophy on life and education.
Today, I was reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ,in a letter to the editor. A mother of 3 sons replied on the Presidential address to school aged children. " I believe in democracy, freedom of speech and diversity. Varied opinions make the world interesting. They broaden our thoughts and deepen our understandings, even if we never agree." "While I understand the parental instinct to protect one's child from harm and hurt, I hope that instead of censorship we each take this opportunity to sit down with our children to teach them to be thinkers and listeners and tell them that with hard work, an education and sheer determination, they too can be president of the United States."
This mother's insight is true wisdom. I believe that we must take courage as Eleanor Roosevelt spoke of and allow these uncomfortable conversations to be developing diving boards to better prepare us: parents, teachers, and leaders of businesses or heads of state, to build the ground work for those tougher conversations that will happen later in a child's life.
I like to call these seemingly smaller conversations "feather beds". What I mean by that is, we lay the ground work and build the relationships so when the harder more painful moments in life happen we are better prepared. We in essence lay a common ground of understanding a "feather bed",so when we disagree or hurt each other the "feather bed catches us and allows us to hit a soft place. The common ground of love and respect.
Its just a thought ,but how do we lay feather beds in our own relationships?

Dreaming Bigger.....

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." -Robert H. Goddard

Lately, as I inch closer to 30 yrs. old, I constantly question myself about dreaming bigger. I never thought that dreaming was ridiculous. I encouraged it in myself, my family encouraged it, my friends allowed me to do it. So therefore I dreamt. Fortunately, all of them haven't come true and sometimes I believe that my own pride and stubbornness got in the way. I am at least honest about that fact.
For example, My parents told me that when they were young and newly married, that they wanted 10 children. Well, God only blessed them with 4 sons, I guess they had a dream and through the birth of each of us we became their hope, and now their reality! The Bible says that the sins of the father pass generation to generation. Well, I believe that the dreams of the father and the hope of the mother create the dreams and realities of the children. My parents were the reason that I saw more for myself, because of them I was challenged to seek out happiness. Their words were the words that I heard in the darkest hours of depression and pain. Their words inspired hope in me.
So now even with the mundane repetition of daily life, we must dream higher and faster and greater so that the dreams that have gotten us this far as a person, society, and nation are not lost. Thomas Edison dreamed of a world where we could see at night. His reality was a dream of Ben Franklin's the time he flew his kite!