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Good Advice From Your Mother

Posted on Monday, February 13th 2012 at 11:46 am

Getting older has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are we can learn from our mistakes and hopefully not repeat them. We have grown wealthy in relationships and memories. The disadvantages are that we have made mistakes and are now fear repeating them. And some of our relationships are poor and the memories faded. I have to guard my heart from becoming cynical and unwilling to trust. Recently I worked with the city council to come up with a solution to opening the pools that are closed because of budget cuts. I was asked by Councilman Fimbres to come up with an idea to open the pools. The idea was to allow businesses to sponsor pools and individuals to sponsor swimmers. I didn't know that in the eighties the city put a moratorium on businesses being able to sponsor city property. So we needed to get council approval to move forward with this idea. When I was driving to the council meeting I was grousing about our city and the missteps, mismanagement and malignancy that has plagued our community. I was getting more negative by the mile and then I "felt" God say "serve them". You may have experienced this yourself, the "pang of conscience" or that "still small voice". My heart was softened and I told the council that day that we in the business community had been absent from the table, except when it was something we were personally benefited from, and that we needed to be a part of the solution. It didn't matter that the city had essentially told us they didn't want our help 3 decades ago. I believe that we have responsibility for what has happened to our community and that we can help change it. Sir Edmund Burke said that "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing". None of us are good, we are all flawed, but we can do what is right and help good to triumph. Certainly we can be taken advantage of when we extend ourselves to help city officials. And once things turn around they can throw us away like an old shoe. If we are focused on the outcome, in example eradicating drug use and poverty in our community, then we may as well be disappointed. But, we aren't responsible for the outcome, only our actions, or inaction. Mother Theresa was asked why she wasn't overwhelmed with the poverty in the slums of India where she labored. Obviously she wasn't making much of a dent in the deplorable conditions in those rat infested environs. She answered "I minister to the person in front of me and then I move on to the next". Good advice from your mother.

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