Greetings,
As a member of Toastmasters International I meet some interesting and amazing people. One is a recent member of our local club named Paul. He's a former criminal who has completely turned his life around. He recently gave a terrific and touching speech that I believe is worth publishing here. He really gave me food for thought and I'm sure he'll give it to you. Please enjoy and then reflect:
"I was flipping through the channels a few weeks ago and I caught a quote, posted on the screen. It was from a viewer of the local news. This viewer had wrote in their opinion in response to a previous story. The story was on the most recent violence and shootings in Toronto. They wrote in saying “if our justice system and courts were not so lenient on our youth, then we wouldn't be having all these problems. We need tougher penalties and longer sentences to handle these people.” This statement took me back. Wow! our society is so naive. Look at where we place the blame. It is not the justice systems responsibility to fix these people. It is our responsibility as citizens, as people, as fellow human beings who walk this world together; to fix this issue. This person felt we needed to rule with the iron fist. Anyone who doesn't follow our rules or fit into our society must be locked up. Put them in jail and throw away the key.
We cannot fight hate with hate. For it was hate that created these criminals in the first place. In the absence of love, hate will prevail. Love is our goal. Love is our ambition. It is when we feel that this is being taken away from us, that is when we react and fight to get it back At any cost. We all crave this love, we all strive for this attention and warmth. Those “criminals”, they want the same things you and I do. They want to feel welcomed. They want to feel apart of something. They want the admiration and respect of their fellow man. Do we honestly believe that the gangs were the first place these people looked for acceptance? The gangs were just the place that someone finally welcomed them with open arms. As people they are no different from you or I. The only difference is society has put them on the outside and as outsiders all they have is the gun to enforce their rules. And each member of that family is more than happy to pick up a weapon to preserve their way of life. For it is that life that has finally given them the feelings they were looking for. The same feelings we all struggle for and long for within us. To me the gun symbolizes how hard these people are willing to fight to hold onto that feeling.
I want to take you on a journey. I want to take you back to kindergarten. Visualize a classroom full of young, spunky three and four year olds. How many of them have a gun? How many do you see living the “thug” life? How many, when asked say “when I grow up I want to be a criminal”? Not one person is born with the desire to hate, the wanting to destroy or the willingness to kill. But then our youth does grow up some do become criminals and some do kill. Why is that? If we are a society and the criminals are outsiders, how did they get there? The kindergarten kids are all insiders but when they grow to adolescents some become outsiders. What happened? At one point or another they get pushed away. We make them feel unwelcome and unwanted. We as adults modeled this behavior everyday as we interact with others and our kids, well they follow us perfectly. As a result we give these people only one final option. We turn them to the last family out there, the family of outsiders, in search of acceptance.
Do you believe that if you grew up under similar circumstances you would be any different from these people. From the way our society treats each other can you expect there to be any difference in the result. When we interact with the people around us we either leave them feeling good about themselves or we leave them feeling terrible about us. We either build love within each other or we foster hate and resentment. With every interaction we have a choice, we can either share a smile and say hi or we can ignore and continue to push away. You want a world filled with respect – show it. You want a world filled of love – give it. All of our issues on the outside stem from our personal issues on the inside. Pick up a book, read it. Learn its teachings. Educate yourself to become a better you so our children can have a better model.
It seems so convenient and easy, just like the lady on the news to blame others for the problems To say its their fault that life is this way. I'm here to tell you this. Take a look at your hand when you point the finger at someone. For every time you point the finger - there are three pointing right back at you. Thank you."
1 comments:
People have the wrong ideal about nature. Not to disappoint anyone but the ads you see on tv are not good for your mental health. They depict that you should by a product using forms of art and manipulation to get you to buy there products. If they get you're interest then you wind up buying the product right? Well I hate to be the one to break the news but the same goes with people "thoughts become things" if we think that someone is a pervert and keep that in our minds the more people the worse it gets. This happens in reality. If we worry that someone is going to kill people or whatever it happens. There are people who say they didn't know why they killed there father or someone else. They are telling the truth. Many think yeah right but they do not think about the fact that they were thinking that they wish that person would die because of the way they treated other people. "People can change if they change there perspective of things". Want to see a child molester become normal. Do you want to end violence? Not all people think that people who have been violent will change. Knowing this causes a problem. Too many people think thoughts that cause things to happen that they do not want to happen. Some are influenced by others to think this way. Rumors are wrongful thinking. Popularity is wrongful thinking. People who are the victim of what they become are people who have been passed off by many to believe falsified statements made by others about that person. That is why the media should go. That is why people should wish for better things as a whole group. That is why people should become more aware of what is really going on and trace history and the things that the leaders have been saying throughout history to cause specific incidences to occur. They did not take into account the consequences of there thoughts, actions, or words they chose to speak. This is what I heard from a Native American. "If people knew the power of words they would be careful about the words they chose to speak".
Post a Comment