Do You Know What You Need To Get To Where You Need To?

Hello guys and trust you had a nice enough week - in spite of this weekend's Orlando "mindless" shooting spree.

Talking about shootings and the frequency, you cannot avoid talking also about the amount of guns on the streets and the need for some form of universal control. Having been in desperate situations where you have to deliberately protect your family, I am in the camp of those that support gun ownership - at the very least for personal protection/scaring would-be assailants.
I have problems though when such weapons turn out to be an AR15 semi-automatic rifles commonly used for mass shootings and placed in the hands of unstable minds.
I sure agree with the argument that there have been more auto accidents than gun violence and that in spite of the number of the accidents, no one ever advocated that governments should ban car-driving. What I don't get though is the fact that the same argument that will ordinarily subscribe to several stringent driving tests in order to minimize road and highway casualties will oppose similar stringency when it comes to gun possession.
You agree that there should be strict laws, demanding would-be drivers to take series of tests before being allowed to drive their cars down our streets, supposedly to minimize incidence of auto crashes and deaths, but do not feel it necessary that gun possession and particularly semi-automatic rifles should be controlled in order to minimize the mass shootings that has become more like popularity contest? Could it be that we are waiting till it gets to us: when we are directly impacted or someone close and dear enough to us is impacted before shouting "foul" and asking for controls? Just some thoughts...

In any case, this week, I am continuing discussions from my book "YOU CAN Make A Determined Difference - In An Environment Of Competitiveness" and excerpting from the topic of knowing what you need to make the difference:

While at my first job, I learned experientially that whatever schooling and paper qualification a worker might have, without knowing the principles of making a determined difference, s/he was bound to “mark time” on the job, at best hoping to make defined progress – in keeping with inflation or not too far from it.

What an irony that many people today flounder for many years of their precious life, wanting to be who and what they do not know. It is a shame, in my thinking, to set oneself on the assembly line of life, to be moved only as others move, as it were, by the same measured force of progress. Worse still is the fact that family, friends and acquaintances continue to prod many, cheering them along the path they were not sure would take them to fulfillment not to talk of making any difference. It is my prayer that you, the reader, will discover your life’s destiny soon enough if you have not already done so, in order to help you find out what you NEED to realize it.

Political scientist, diplomat and now elder statesman Henry Kissinger has been severally quoted as saying:

“If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.”

How so true! Know what you need and the path to getting it!

Have a great week ahead of you. Cheers.

Your Needs: Void Of Fascination, Infatuation Or Obsessive Compulsiveness...

Hello all and trust your past week went well.

For me, I thought the week was quite interesting for couple of reasons among several others: one mainly for the continued and heated talk on transgender bills around the country and the other the passing of a legend.

I am tempted to think that stakeholders in the transgender "drama" really do not quite know what they want not to talk of what they need. In my opinion, nature always has the answer. Whether via registration at birth or credible "biological" discovery in later years, nature could not and should never be blamed. It remains what it is. I have a grouse though with those who just decide on their own that they have to alter nature. Do they know what they want or need?

And as if in a contrast... the passing of Mohamed Ali is, to my mind, a case of the man who seemed to have achieved destiny.

That leads me to today's topic: KNOWING WHAT YOU NEED.

Few years ago, one of my children was fond of getting attracted to anything or anyone that fascinated her. She would listen to the radio and the sweet voice of the broadcasters and the music and stories and she would want to be a “radio” with sweet sounds. A while after, she would observe the stylish and respected work of the traffic cops: how the lady police officer would order massive trucks to stop and let smaller vehicles go by at the wave of her command. She was so fascinated that she really wanted to be a police officer. That fascination wore off couple of years down the road when she began to feel the love and care of her new kindergarten “auntie” [as the children’s teachers were called then]. This went on several weeks till one nice afternoon she returned home from school and her feelings found yet another expression. She ran up to me and said “Daddy, I really like Auntie L and will like to be a teacher when I grow up.” Knowing that that sounded very much like another phase of her usual fancies, I nonetheless commended her and told her mommy and I would be there for her should that be her life goal.

Of course today, after high school, college and graduate school, she is anything but a radio, a police officer or a teacher. She seemed to have found her destiny and is happily pursuing it with passion and vigor.

The problem remains that many kids just do not know exactly what they want to be. Life to them is about fantasy and control. And don’t many of us, like kids, fail to know what we really want out of life? We see the Jones’ doing one thing and we want to do the same. Then the Thomas’ came along and doing another and we want to follow the trend. We’re easily carried about and away by what others are doing.

One day, we see someone who is running and getting some publicity and we want to be a runner. Another day is a Hollywood star performing some stunt and there you go, we want to be and do the same. Like the children, we seem not to know why we are here on Earth or what we want from it.

Have a great rest of the week ahead.

Blessings.