Waking Muse

 

Pessimistic (From the online Wicktionary)

1. marked by pessimism and little hopefulness
2. always expecting the worse

 

 

Above is the dictionary explanation of pessimism.  I don’t believe I have to work hard to make you agree that in the world we live in today pessimism can overwhelm us all.  There are so many things wrong in the world we can get caught in an ocean as if the waves were beating us under and we are drowning.

 

We have wars, terrorists and at home there are simply bad men who break into people’s houses to rape and rob.  Our faith sometimes is challenged to the point where it knows not how to stand.

 

If you look the word faith up in the same dictionary it is defined as, “Mental acceptance of a confidence in a claim as truth without proof supporting the claim.”  Our faith in God is like that.  None have seen him but we believe with our hearts and soul that he is here.

 

Where doubt strikes at our faith is the point when things seem to overload and our lives seem to become out of control and we do not know where to turn.

 

Let me take you back and try to put all this together.  My life has been an example of how we can be tempted to simply give up.

 

When I was in the ninth grade I had a Math teacher who held me over after class and spent five minutes calling me a vegetable and telling me I would never make anything of myself simply because I had done poorly on a math test.  He didn’t see potential in me and he refused to try to see it.  So I ask you, “Who was the vegetable?”  This was an example of how our educational system has failed.  It is not something that happened in the year 2000 or even 1990.  It has been happening ever since the system was placed there.  Does this mean we give up on the system?  By all means not!  It means we work at fixing a system that was never perfect anyway.

 

I have often wondered what that teacher would have thought if he had known that when I took the Army aptitude test upon my graduation from high school and was found best suited for Army finance and accepted into the Army Finance program.

 

Strike one for the system.

 

Strike two came when I started having horrible pain during basic training causing me to have trouble keeping up with the others and earning nicknames like Hooby’s Goat and Hop-a-long Skip-a-long.  I made it through Basic but wore class A’s to run through the sand trap.  Class A’s for those of you who do not know is dress shoes.  The Doctors said I was not used to Army boots.

 

After I got to Fort Benjamin Harrison to begin Army finance school I didn’t eat three meals a day.  The barracks was on one end of the school and the chow hall was on the other.  It was a long walk and it hurt to walk.  I kept going to the doctors and finally a doctor said to me,

“You don’t like the Army, do you?”  I answered his question with one of my own.

“How can I?  I can’t walk.”  Needless to say they pushed a stack of papers in front of a seventeen year-old that was in pain and emotional turmoil and ask him to sign them and I was soon going home.  It was five months and seventeen days after I started Basic Training.  I didn’t even know what I was signing.  It would haunt me for a long time because I was marked as 4-F.  That means it is an honorable discharge but the reason is “Non-adaptable to service life.  It goes on to say something about “social and behavioral problems.”

 

What I can say that is good about our country is the separation of powers does sometimes work for us.  The State of Maryland, “Vocational Educational Service” finding out of my problem when my parents appealed to them sent me to children’s hospital.  They operated on both my social and behavioral problems.  I had fallen Arches.

 

I was angry at the Army for a long time.  Now I look back and realize that the timing was bad for this came on right after I entered the Army.  Why didn’t it happen the year before?  Thus ends another chapter in the life of Lew Duffey.

 

Now I am going to drop the pessimism and turn to a more positive attitude.  Even though there are things I would like to see improved for our kids, especially those young men who have all sorts of physical problems from fighting in Iraq only to find the government is not interested enough in making sure they get medical treatment and even though I think the problem they face is not new but part of something that has been falling apart ever since it’s inception, I do believe that all things work for the good of those who love the Lord.

 

Case in point; if I had not been kicked out of the Army I would have never gone to the Vocational Rehabilitation Service.  I would have not gone into radio.  I in all likeliness would have never met my wife and I would not have three children to love who have grown up to give me five grandchildren.  Would I trade them for an easier time in the Army?  Not on your life.

 

The Bible says, “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.”  That can be taken in a couple of ways.  If you live in Texas both the just and unjust are yelling, “Enough is enough!”  Here in Maryland we are crying send some of that our way.

 

Life has its dry spells and we sometimes can be flooded with worries and trials.  That is all a part of living.  We try to make things better but we need to hold onto faith to do this and that means everything I have written so far is a part of building something in life.

 

There is a game where the players build with blocks.  The idea is to pull a block that is already in the tower out and move it to the top.  The loser is the poor soul who pulls the wrong block out and the tower crumbles.  Take even the bad times I have experienced and change them and you are removing a block upon which many blessings may be sitting.  You removed the heartache but in the process you lost all the blessings.

 

Do you see where I am going with this yet?  Life is not perfect.  We are not living in a perfect world but that does not mean we should not strive for perfection.

 

Too many of our young people have turned to drugs because they find no reason for hope.  Hope is the life line we cannot let go of.  Without it people do horrible things.  Without hope people become horrible things.

 

My first novel, “Immaculate White Smoke” was written about a character like that.  Although the story is intended to be a light-hearted comedy it is a true reflection of how we can allow ourselves to get caught up in a negative atmosphere and it can cause us to be something far less than we would like to be.

 

So here is my challenge.  I am betting it is your challenge, too.  Whatever comes your way, live life to its fullest.  Take the heartaches and use what you learn to build something positive.  Dwell on things that are good and learn from your mistakes and be forgiving with others when they make mistakes.  Your world can only be as good as you allow it to be.  If you look past the rain clouds you see the flowers blooming.  If you look past life’s little traumas you see that even they play a part in your spiritual growth.

 

Don’t ever stop looking for ways to make yourself better.  You do not need to think of yourself as a failure.  You simply say as you step up one step toward the top. 

“One step made.  Now I work on the next.  Life is what you make it.  Give into temptation or aspire for more of life’s blessings.

 

It’s your choice.