Things as They Come

My children look at the world so differently than I did at their age.  They are so much more awake.  I've considered that my own childhood was a series of things that happened to me.  Maybe much of my life has been that way?  I was just swept along with the tide, ever-accepting of things as they came. 

Am I now in a new season of my life where I take the reins and make things happen on my own?  I see myself making new connections in everyday settings.  I see people happy to meet me.  I see the world as an open place, and myself ready to meet it!  What a powerful feeling to have!

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make a life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and person humanized or dehumanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

It we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

~Goethe, as taken from The Waldorf Book of Poetry