Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Somehow I missed posting this one.

3."Give Service-With a loving heart and willing hands, give service to others because you want to give it and because you can make someone happy at home, at school, among your friends, and in your community."
hmmmmm....where to begin with this one.  It has been hard for me to WANT to perform certain tasks like housework and that is what this one always meant to me.  To clean up after others or cook or sew.  The sewing part has always been easy but cleaning is not a creative activity.  Of someone could show me how to be creative with housework I might change my attitude but that's another activity that gets little appreciation or respect.  I'm seeing a pattern here! I don't feel appreciated or respected.  You are supposed to "give service" because you want to not for what you will get for it.  Do other people find satisfaction in that?  But there you go.  You don't do it for satisfaction you just do it.  Does it make others happy if they don't show it?  It seems the more you do for people the more they expect.
4. "Pursue Knowledge-That doesn't mean catch up with knowledge and put it in your pocket! Knowledge can  never be caught.  You always pursue it to understand, to do, and to be what you want to be.  One way you pursue knowledge is to earn new honors in the Seven Crafts and achieve Camp Fire ranks."
When I was a kid I thought we went to school to be tested on what we already knew.  I didn't know I was there to learn what I didn't know.  I thought everyone else knew everything and I was just faking it.  I remember the night before I started third grade.  I stayed up late asking my mom the multiplication tables.  I thought I would be tested on it and I was afraid to go to school not knowing.  We didn't have many books in our house. When I first got my library card I went to the children's section and started with the letter A.  I took the first two books off the shelf.   Both books were about animals but the only one I remember was about the life of the otter.  My mother would only let me bring two library books home at a time and she wouldn't take me back to the library until the books were due.  She said she didn't want me to be a bookworm.  Well I wanted to be an otter  but we don't always get what we want do we?  We did get the local newspaper, all ten pages of it, and I read it from cover to cover every evening.  I was obedient and only read as much of the text books as I was assigned.  I could have read them all the first week of school but I was afraid of getting into trouble for reading ahead.  Besides, if I had read it all at once there would have been nothing left to read for the rest of the school year and I didn't want to set myself up for that much boredom.  There just weren't that many opportunities to learn.  Later, in junior high and high school, when I had greater access to the library, my interests were all over the place.  I remember looking at the "NEW BOOKS" shelf that was separate from the stacks.  At one time I checked out Mike Royko's Boss, Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish and  just for fun The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky.  Not being able to focus on one thing I spent three years in two community colleges before leaving to join the Peace Corps.  Well, at least my Spanish classes hadn't been a waste of time! After my Peace Corps years I went back to school to major in business but it bored me to death.  I browsed through the catalog and discovered a program in Latin American Studies and I knew that was for me.  The program consisted of a combination of history, geography, political science and languages (Spanish and Portuguese).  After taking several semesters of Latin American history and with my advisor telling me I was taking too many history classes I realized history was my passion.  I ended up moving away from there but I did  finish a  Bachelor's in history in my new location.  And I had done it all by the age of forty(sarcasm?) I then jumped into a master's  in anthropology, took all the classes but never finished the thesis.  I am deep in debt now.  Part of the reason I did it was because I was supporting two kids(yes I had children somewhere along the way!) mostly on student loans.  I don't regret it.  I realize that pursuing knowledge does not necessarily mean getting degrees and letters after your name but it was important to me to graduate.  I still read a lot and try to learn as much as I can about whatever interests me. 
5. "Be Trustworthy-Be honest and truthful.  Be fair in work and in play.  This part of the law does not say "ACT trustworthy", it says BE Trustworthy."  It means you always keep your word and are worthy of trust."
Reading this I am reminded of a quote credited to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, "If you can't say something nice, come sit by me."  Though I'm not sure that applies in this situation.  I think not gossiping about people is part of being trustworthy.  I don't know if I was an honest and truthful child.  I hope I was but I rarely went anywhere or did anything so I had very little to be dishonest about.  Well, actually, I mentioned earlier that I always read my textbooks as they were assigned instead of reading ahead. I guess that was one example of being trustworthy.  If you do it out of fear is that still considered being trustworthy?  I think as an adult I have tried to be honest unless it was too painful to be honest.  I have not always kept my promises as sometimes that has been impossible.  Either finances or situations prevented it.  Does that absolve me?  Should be keep promises at all costs?

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