"Crawl, Walk, Run, and Soar"

As babies, we grow to have a curiosity about the world and have an eagerness to explore it and see how things operate in this big world. With each passing year throughout that stage, we learn and grow. In the process of learning and growing, we develop ourselves inside and out. As we enter into elementary, teenage, and then adulthood, we learn and continue to grow even more. But with each of those transitions, we have to learn to accept that sometimes we may just have to make those transitions alone. Unfortunately, that means that the same people that we used to be with may or may not be able to handle it.

There is a little thing called maturity that each and every one of us has to encounter at one point or another and for some that may be a scary thing. Some of us don't like the idea of having to move out of our comfort zone and go on to encounter new things. We would rather sit and stay in the vicinity that we are most familiar with along with those that feel the exact same way. We don't want to grow and leave behind our former ways. But how can you get better in life and succeed in life when you just merely keep the same mentality as an adult that you had when you were in the stages of a teen? The answer is simply this...YOU CAN'T!!!

I see this alot in college especially. It seems that alot of the men and women that I once used to run with, can't seem to leave a certain type of "hood" mentality behind with childish ways. They seem to feel most comfortable walking, talking, and acting the way that they did during younger years and as as result, cannot seem to advance in life at all. They may say that they are a grown man or woman and that they are doing it "big" but it seems to me that the ones that can't leave that mentality behind are simply defining "big" as what is at the end of their block, failing to realize that the world doesn't end there.

For some of us, this experience isn't the best feeling in the world because it hurts us to have to leave those childish ways and people behind. We thought that those particular "friends" of ours would grow with us and continue to be there to this day. It turns out that those people that we once used to run next to are still in the stages of crawling and have yet to realize that they need to get out of their own comfort zone and mentality in order to grow in life.

Though it may seem like a diss to those that don't grow as fast in maturity, to see it that way would be considered childish anyway. One can only crawl first. Once you learn to crawl, you have to walk. Once you learn how to walk, you have to run. Once you learn to run, you have to soar. Once you learn to soar, no one can stop you and bring you down. Don't be afraid to leave childish ways and people behind for the sake of growing in life. God brings people in our lives for seasons. And once that season is up, it's time to move on. Crawl, walk, run, soar and you can never fall.

"Going Beyond the Gate"

So this is the first blog entry that I have written for the year 2009 and I must say that I have some serious stuff to reflect on. My thoughts actually all came on my 21st bday no last week. I realized that each year one should be able to advance further in life than what one did the year before. A new year should bring about new thoughts, new decisions, and simply a new life in general. But what happens when you realize that moving forward may hurt so much that you are afraid to even move at all? What happens when you may just end up at the other side of the gate alone? My answer to those questions and the like is simply this: How will you know what is even on the other side of the gate if you don't even go at all?

There's a story in the Bible that talks about a small group of men that had lepracy disease. They had been traveling for quite sometime until they got so tired that they just sat at the temple. After doing such, one of the men simply propsed a thought: why bother just sitting here waiting to die? Now, that may seem to some to be a simple question, but it's a question that brings about many thoughts. Sometimes we as a people have a tendency to just sit and wait for things to happen simply because that is what is most comfortable. Rather than go through the gates of the timple, we'd rather just sit at the steps and wait. My question is, wait for what and how long?

Oftentimes, when we see that the majority is doing something or the majority decides on a common thing, it will be accepted and become the general norm. But haven't norms been broken? Haven't there been so many people throughout history who refused to stand at the gate like everyone else and become what we call innovators? Why bother just sitting at the gate and letting time pass? Why not just go through the gate and see what the temple holds?

We may tell ourselves that since the steps is where everyone else is sitting, maybe we should do the same thing. We may just grow to accept that maybe the steps is the best place to sit. It's comfortable to sit there rather than just get up and walk. Some may grow so tired of walking that the steps is just the place to be. But my question for those step-sitters is this: if something is already being done by many, why bother reinventing the wheel? Why not start a new trend? Why not step out of your own comfort zone and go further? It can't be that hard. What have you got to lose anyway, you've already come that far.