Fantasyland?

I have been blessed to have a spouse, who is an incredible writer with an amazing imagination. It is always fascinating to see how my Anne will come up with interesting stories around people, stray animals and places we have visited. It doesn’t take too long before the duck we have been feeding at our canal has a name and background. I guess growing up I was more into digging tunnels and playing guitar.

As I have journeyed through doing community work over the last 6 years it strikes me the importance of helping my kids, teens and adults learn how to dream. It isn’t easy to help someone think about their future if they have never been allowed to dream about what they want to really do with their lives. I know that as a youngster I watched my dad fly off in some gigantic airplanes that he directed across the world to a totally different place to help people that were being attacked. I can remember thinking what it must have been like for my dad as a little kid, when planes weren’t very popular, to think about becoming a flyer.

I have taken a week to think through this particular blog between sickness and the hospitalization of one of our painting grandpa’s – Art. I know that I struggle with being creative and having a growing imagination when it comes to the mechanics of doing old things in new ways. How can you persuade someone who hates to read to actually pick up a book or at least a Kindle or iPad device?

There are a couple of younger kids and teens in our group that are incredible sketchers. They love to copy or embellish something that they see. I have one pre-teen who is incredible with drawing Chinese cartoon characters. He can whip out a pencil or pen and have his little sketch done in minutes. Then I have another guy who is totally into sports and has to find someone via the Internet that he can copy in some type of sports pose. I have a couple of his masterpieces on my wall in my office.

I’m feeling somewhat mortal after being sick for the last few days. I want to be  a conduit that God can use, to expand the thinking and horizons of both the young and the old. I have a group of single moms who are back in school trying to finish their G.E.D.s. It is really tough to learn how to read and write after being out of school for 10 to 20 years. Yet, what excites me is their willingness to dive into to it and not settle for anything less then finishing.

My real point behind this blog was that too many people that I’m around really do live in a fantasyland type of existence. They really believe that there is someone else out there who is going to provide for their every need. They seem to continue to make poor choices that end up crippling them and making them 30-year-old dropouts. I always laugh to myself when I hear one of our kids talk like, “What planet do these people think they live on?”.

I know that with much of the social media hype around the end of the last year and beginning of the New Year there is always lots of mention about predictions and reflections on what did happen. I was impressed with this one person on LinkedIn who asked for the best or worse advise from their parents about life. It was an incredible list of sayings which almost any of my older friends could have shared. I even catch myself being quoted by someone else and it strikes me that I’m still doing the same thing myself.  I know that talk is cheap and actions always speak louder than my words. So it is one thing to act interested in someone in great need but it is another to go out of your way to love on them.

So is it possible for an old guy, like me, to learn more effective ways to communicate via the written word, spoken word and lived out word? I truly hope I can become more capable of getting my own attention and of those around me with God’s help!