My principles

            I had unique principles taught to me as I was growing up. I had the principles my mother was teaching me, which was racial equality, justice, to stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves, and to help a stranger when I could. I had another strong influence growing up, which were my grandparents. They were old school and raised me as such.  Some of their principles were, love your country, do what you were told, be quite but speak up, respect your elders and read your bible.

            These fundamental principels were the basic foundations to my shaping as I grew up. To the point that I remember being very young and not realizing that my best friends were black. What did that mean to be black? What was skin color? Sure they went to a different church, but so did my cousins. In this situation ignorance truly is bliss.

I spoke of standing up for others earlier; this is one of the principals that today I will get very emotional over. If I see an injustice being done so an elderly person or someone mentally incapable of understanding what’s going on, I lose my mind in rage. I literally hulk out. It’s one of the craziest responses I’ve ever seen. I just want to take all the elderly and mentally challenged people of the world who have no one to care for them and put them on a farm somewhere and just let them run around and live their lives. No but seriously, I want to save all those people and personally give them all the attention they want/need.

It’s funny, I feel especially close to my grandparents, but some of their principles are the ones I struggle with the most. Such as, read your bible and do what you’re told. I really dislike doing both of those, I do them when prudent, but I really dislike doing either. Unless I’m willing, you can’t tell me what to do. Ever. I struggled with this in the military obviously and struggle with it at school today.

One of my favorite instructors, Mary Ferdon; had a policy of no hats in her professional writing class. I understand why she made the policy and it’s a sound thought process that I agree with, but I hate to be told what to do. I love wearing my hats as every body knows. As my friend John would say, DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO NARC! I did as instructed, but at great difficulty.

I will occasionally read the Christian Bible for leisure. It’s generally boring to me even when I read it for it’s historical perspective. I feel compelled to read it because it was something instilled in my as a young child growing up, to the point that we have 3 or 4 bibles in the house. My wife and I are both Atheists and my kids are kind of undecided. We’re encouraging religious exploration. My son seems to be leaning towards Christianity and my daughter seems to be leaning towards Wicca.

I’m at odds with my daughter believing in magic. I went through that phase, but I can’t help having an issue with it. It was part of my upbringing. It’s funny that now that I’m an adult and I instruct my children in life I default to that which I was taught. I count myself lucky in the principals that I learned. I think I received a fair mixture of instruction, one that I am happy to pass on to my children. Well, except the reading your bible part. I think I’ll let them choose that for themselves.