Blatancy

bla·tant – adjective
1. Brazenly obvious; flagrant: a blatant error in simple addition; a blatant lie.

Have you ever watched the Miss America Pageant? Or the Miss Universe contest or Miss Teen USA? Ever notice how even the most vacuous contestant can appear indignant when asked what they would do, if crowned, to change the world? Of course the majority of contestants all spew the same blather of wanting “world peace”, even though I doubt very much that a single one of them has the faintest idea of what that really means.

So here’s the question of the day? Do you know what it takes to achieve world peace? Do you even know where to start? What if I told you that you were born with an innate sense of what to do? What if I told you that your own mother and father were grooming you for the proper qualifications to meet the needs of world peace as a youngster?

Most likely you grew up with the golden rule tattooed somewhere near your rear end. Your parents constantly drilled into you the importance of treating others with respect, showing kindness, saying nice things instead of not nice things and so on. “Be nice to your brother”, “don’t hit your sister”, “the cat does not belong in the dryer”, and so on.

In any culture, unless your family dynamic was really messed up, you were raised to respect your elders, to use your manners while also being polite and of course not to take others things. In fact nowhere in the world is it OK to steal, you heard me, nowhere.

So at what point in our development from childhood to adulthood do we make the switch? Does it happen after high school? Does it occur in grade school somewhere? Or is it later on in college? I’m no psychologist but I can tell you this, there are some people out there who have some explaining to do with regards to the raising of their children. It might take a village to raise a child but do me a favor and ban the village idiot from the classroom.

Of course these are rather harsh statements but blatancy works like that. It is brazenly obvious like the definition says above. Over the span of some few thousand years we have fought to define parenting from what it looks like to how to do it right. Hundreds of thousands of men and women with heady degrees have written tomes on the subject, all with the same outcome. We have children out there whose parents were busy spending quality time with the idiot and not with their own kids.

This of course gets me off of topic to some small degree, but I will hastily return us to the important subject at hand, and that is peace.

What I tire of is not just the garden variety apathy of most adults I come into contact with, but their lack of wanton to improve their own lives as well as the lives of their children. The scary thing however is the longer adults procrastinate about the future, the worse it gets for their kids. Once this seed of apathy is sewn, it grows into the hearts and minds of the next generation, which in turn dominoes into the next and then the next…and so on.

When grown mothers and fathers disregard social and lawful rules including being peaceful towards your family, friends and neighbors, we make it socially acceptable for our children to follow in our footsteps. Your kids will grow to steal, cheat systems, lie and cause general unrest within their very circle of society. This dilemma is expensive and quite frankly, our world can no longer afford for its’ citizens to act with this kind of disregard. It is time to act. It is time for peace.

Start today by taking a post-it-note and writing the word ‘peace’ on it and sticking it in your car. Put another one on your computer monitor, either at the office or at home, or both! Put one on the fridge. Put one in your wallet. Personalize your cell phone screensaver with the word peace.

We have an amazing potential you and I to change this world. Even more so do our children, as evidenced by this cartoon… here

It starts with us and it starts now. Seek peace in every circle of influence in your life. I know it is hard work, but imagine the dividends, they shouldn't be blatant.

my life is not mine, and yet it is mine to live for Him. Peace to you all.
D