Rite of Passage?

by Katie Sakowicz

With most problems in life, it is always a good idea to find the origin or root of the problem in order to solve it, no matter how big or how small it may be. Whether it be losing your keys or finding the cure to fatal disease, going back to the beginning or the birth of something will aid the most in defeating your problem. I believe the most important role one can play in improving the quality of life in our communities begins from the moment a child is born. People speak of coming up with solutions to having children and having a full time job at the same time. Companies have their own daycare centers at the office or else people hire a full time nanny or some other rent-a-parent type place. What it comes down to is people needing to be there for their children to raise them in a loving stable atmosphere. That doesn’t come from parents that fight all the time or are never there for them or get re-married over and over. If a child lives with hostility and shame, they learn to fight and feel guilty. On the other hand if a child lives with encouragement, acceptance and friendship they can find confidence and love in the world. If a person can find that in the world a lot of our problems in society could be erased.

During my seventeen years on this earth I have met and gotten to know many people. I have made friends and have lost some friends. One thing, however, that I have learned through my different relationships is that those people that I met that weren’t suicidal, depressed, on anti-depressants, those that had goals, and a good conscience, they all had a good family life with a mother and father that cared greatly about them. In our communities today we need to stress the importance of a good family. Maybe in some cases even marriage is not a necessity as long as the parents stay together and are in a faithful loving relationship.

Today we tend to judge a persons or families status in life on their yearly income or how many cars they have. When it comes down to it I know more people that are “rich” that are unhappy than those people that have an average house and an average car. Perhaps money at times can lead to good things in our society but we need to start with making a society of people that can respect how to use that money and how to get that money. We are always hit with the phrase ‘as the rich get richer the poor get poorer’. So we have programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing. Is something like that going to help the poor get any poorer? In most cases probably not.

In areas of poverty and violence it is very hard to have a ‘normal’ family. It is difficult to instill any values into to a person that has grown up surrounded by violence and poverty. People need to have better job opportunities or have more educational opportunities for adults so that they can earn more money and be able to pull themselves out of poverty. It only takes a couple of people to set a good example and being a gradual descent out of this well of hopelessness. By working a good honest day of work and earning decent wages people are going to be a lot more productive and a lot more to our communities than living off of anyone that pays taxes. We think that by concentrating on larger cities we can solve our problems of society quicker. While it is true we can reach more people in the larger cities, we have neglected people in other areas of the country. Do you think that only people in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York get divorced, are victims of violence or abuse, or uneducated? Of course they aren’t. Maybe that’s why we are more surprised then we should be when we hear of all these shootings in small town schools. We are all still in the state of ‘not me’. ‘Nothing can happen to me.’ ‘I am happy living in my own little bubble were nothing possibly could go wrong where I live.’ That’s not true though.

No matter where a person lives, if they are grown up with an abusive father or are constantly neglected, that person, nine times out of ten, is not going to grow up to be the model citizen. At the rate things are changing in our society today, its going to become harder and harder to improve society. We may be making some good improvements but the new dangers that arise are increasing at an even faster rate than the solutions. So perhaps we better start with the beginning or someday it could possibly lead to our end.

Questions

1. Society invests in marriage in the USA by many people surviving on the fact that people get married. We have the people that own the banquet halls where wedding receptions are held, the ministers and churches that are all paid to hold a marriage. Then is a marriage ends the price the lawyers get paid to settle the divorce. In Manus they plan on the marriage being productive and that it will contribute to the good of society. When things go well both sides of the family benefit. They make their investment of clam shells or oil and if the marriage is strong and healthy their “stick” goes up.

a. 25 years. The advice they give is to listen to each other and try to be as understanding as possible

b. 2 years. Trust each other and always be open to each others opinions

c. 30 years. Marry someone who you can always turn to and who you wouldn’t mind waking up to every day.

d. 15 years. Never give up

e. 10 years. Never let things get boring and not to be afraid of trying new things in life with each other

f. 21 years. Always tell the truth to each other and speak honestly.

g. 45 years. Enjoy every single day of your life that you have with your spouse

h. 11 years. Never forget to tell your spouse how much you love them.

i. 13 years. When in an argument remember why you married this person and how much you really love them.

j. 14 years. Always leave sometime during the day to talk and be with each other and to listen to each other.

3. Our collective goal is to reasses our lives and to really think about what is missing is from them. Do we really need more material things or do we need to make our society better from within ourselves. We need to think about how we really should judge the quality of life.

A worthy goal for our community would be to clean-up our school system and spend more time and attention from an early age with out children and what they really need to be taught.