Day 132 - Hope You Dance

Thought of the day: This morning I read on the paper of a recent incident on a local hiking trail.  An older gentleman was lying bleeding on the trail and his situation was clearly calling out for help.  Groups of hikers and dog-walkers just walked right past him without stopping to offer a hand.  At the end, the poor guy had to basically crawl back to his car and drove himself to urgent care.  This story made me sad.  What kind of people would just ignore an injured older man and leave him lying on a hiking trail?  How do these people feel afterwards about themselves?  I am sure these people are not representatives of the general local population, however, I am not surprised that people like that do exist.  They are self centered and protecting their personal interests above and beyond anything else.  Some of them may also have been young and entitled.  I think it's an utter failure of parents to raise young adults who would behave like that.  This incident got me to think: as parents, how do we raise children with good moral values?  Action is worth a lot more than words, so it's necessary for the parents to set good examples for their kids.  And how about peace corps?  Some people say that by the time a person is old enough to volunteer overseas, his character and values may have been too well formed to be influenced for real.   So perhaps we should get them involved in community services early to broaden their perspectives when they are still young.  Unfortunately, there're really no golden bullets here.  There are influences that parents do not realistically have control of.  At the end, we parents just have to do our best and hope that our kids will find the light and grow into people with values and integrity.

Photo of the day:

Jasmine's friend giving Lila a lift up some stairways.  When an 8-yr-old is having so much fun playing with a 2-yr-old, I take it as a good indication that the older girl will grow up into a happy, caring young person.  The complete sentence on the wall  was: "When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance." Dance they did - in the sun.