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Rules to live by
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If you’re graduating from college or high school this month, maybe someone will give you Charles Sykes’s 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in Schools (St. Martin’s Press, 2008). It’s not bad, starting with its short and appropriately sour rule #1: “Life is not fair. Get used to it.”
Many of the rules emphasize the need to work hard in a competitive environment: “The real world won’t care as much as your school does about your self-esteem…. No matter what your daddy says, you are not a princess….Life is more like dodgeball than your gym teacher thinks…. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.”
Other rules advise patience: “You are not the first and you are not the only one who has gone through what you are going through…. Grown-ups forget how scary it is to be your age. Just remember: this too will pass.” Sykes asserts the importance of both objective reality (“Pi does not care what you think”) and personal relationships (“Don’t forget to say thank you”).
Two rules in particular, if followed, would forestall lots of sadness: “Your sexual organs were not meant to engage in higher-order thinking or decision making,” and “You are not immortal.”
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Soul searching
God is at work in this world; He is worth knowing, read the Psalms and find out what He is doing and where you fit.
Life is not fair. Get used to it.
A lesson that is taught by middle school teachers.
I wonder if Sykes includes:
The fact that your skin is darker than someone else’s does not mean they owe you.
Or.
Hating someone whose skin is lighter than yours is not an excuse to accuse them of hatred.
I appreciate that self-esteem one.
Teens (and even college students) today are too easily insulted.
Is “not everything relates back to you” in there? It should be.
This year, I’m getting all the graduates I know the book “Do Hard Things” by Alex and Brett Harris (19yo Christian homeschooled twin boys of Greg & Sono Harris). WOW, what a motivating message these boys have for their generation, and what an example they’ve set. Their website is at the rebelution (dot) com.
But life would be easy if not for Bush! He is the source of all strife and inconvenience! Let’s elect Obama and we’ll all have lucrative careers as ice-cream testers!
At least with another Democrat in the WH we will be spared 4 years of news accounts of homelessness, no?!
Is this book already out in paperback or tradeback? It would make a good graduation gift. But for those graduating not from high school or college. Instead, let it be read and discussed by those leaving jr high for senior high school!!
I did an Amazon search for this author. He’s written a few good ones.
Sawgunner - You’re likely correct. Things will be no better, and may well even be much worse. But the news will spin all positive if the Ds capture the White House. The MSM will go back into full glass half full (or all full) for the GOP mode of glass half empty (or doomsday scenario weaving).
ENDYBLUE -
I also got a copy of “Do Hard Things” by Alex and Brett Harris for each of the kids in my Jr High Sunday School class who were moving up to High School.
therebelution.com