Something to Believe In

Everyone always has been and always will be searching for something to believe in. Even people using drugs are often people who have given up searching or trying to believe in anything. And this gesture often is an alternative to suicide. In college in my teens and twenties I met many people like this.

I have been lucky. I always have believed in something even if that something slowly changed and evolved over the years as I was presented by college, life, and the people I met better and better things to believe in.

However, what one is taught to believe in as a child (or not taught) stays with them throughout their lives. Childhood is such a potentially magical thing that it seems to set the core of a person for life. So even if they learn new things as I did along the way, still what they learned as a child sets the tone of their lives.

So, if you are an adult raising or teaching children under 12 years old you have an incredible responsibility because what you teach these children will affect them in one way or another their whole lives. This is just a part of the developmental process of all human beings.

Some people or cultures tend to be one dimensional in that one is forced to believe one thing and never change. And I recognize this for what it is: tradition.

However, others of us grow up in places like Coastal California, Oregon or Washington where change and growth is a natural part of growing up in these places. New concepts and ideas are springing up all the time and part of the joy of growing up in places like this are these new ideas constantly percolating up through the culture all the time.

Others around the world might recoil in horror or be secretly amazed by a culture like this. Of course there is both good and bad both to a culture that stays rigid like cement or one that can change every day. Both have their uses to everyone on the world stage of progress and beliefs. Recognizing this is just what any intelligent person does. And if you are intelligent you will benefit from the whole world and all the variations possible and not just get stuck in any one system of belief.

For only through mutual understanding will the world not just eventually blow itself up. If that happens where will we all be?