Wildflower Writes

Photo by  Alexander Milo  on  Unsplash   There’s a quote by C.S. Lewis- You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. Words like this remind us that a situation is never hopeless, and we’re never helpless. In every dark place there is still light to be found. In any kind of pain, there can be healing. No matter how powerless we feel, we can always choose our attitude and our response. Change is hard. It requires courage, persistence, and faith. And it always seems like the initial steps don’t matter, don’t make a difference. The fact is, if you take 2000 steps, you’ve walked a mile. It’s just a matter of continuing in the right direction. Whatever is in your way right now, don’t give up and don’t lose hope.

As a child, I remember fighting with my siblings to get my fair share. In those times, one of my father’s favorite sayings was “It’s not all about you.” While often said with force and intended to end the argument, the underlying message remains. Life is not about self or what you want or what makes you happy. Life is infinitely richer than the narrow framework of self. It involves interacting with and caring for other people. At the early stages of a child’s life, the parents make a choice to pander to every felt need of that child, or at some point communicate to him that parents are people too. When a toddler is told “no” he begins to realize he is not the center of the universe and is not entitled to have all his desires met. He learns some actions are unsafe and others are not kind. Compassion is also taught in parental response to their children in times of pain, sadness, or fear. An attentive parent learns to distinguish the types of cries. A child needs to know that her parent...