Are They and Them More Important Than You: A How to Guide on Defeating and Eliminating the Negative

By Xlibris US

Ahow to guide on defeating and eliminating the negative impact and influence that they and them have on you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499066487

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Ronnie Burpo.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014915318

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-6649-4

                Softcover         978-1-4990-6650-0

                eBook              978-1-4990-6648-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/28/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Chapter 1 When We Were Young

Chapter 2 The Teenage Years

Chapter 3 Adulthood – The Turning Point

Chapter 4 Can I Borrow Your Time Machine?

Chapter 5 They Say He, She Is Not Right For Me

Chapter 6 I Thought That I Could Handle The Loss

Chapter 7 If It Wasn’t For Them

Chapter 8 I Don’t Ever Want To See Them Again

Chapter 9 They Said That This Would Be Best For Me

Chapter 10 Why Did They Do That To Me?

Chapter 11 They And Them Finally Left Me Alone

CHAPTER 1

When We Were Young

I ’M SURE THAT most of us will agree that a child is one of the most precious gifts we’ll ever have to come into our lives. According to my parents, I started walking shortly before I turned a year old. Shortly after I started walking, I became the terror on two feet in our household. Like most infants, I was curious and sought to get into anything and everything that I could. If it’s true that a child shall lead them, according to my parents, siblings, and babysitters, that statement definitely was not referring to me. The only place during my infancy that I was going to lead anyone was over the edge of the Grand Canyon. Like most young children, I was fearless. I didn’t know what I was doing or even why I was doing it. All I knew at that time was that I wanted to continue to do it and I didn’t want anyone to stop me. I didn’t know what I was doing at that time was called fun by the older folks. I had energy and I had just learned how to run. When I was three years old, I wandered away from home and got lost. My parents were about as nervous as a mouse in a house full of cats, not knowing my whereabouts. After searching the neighborhood and punishing my siblings because of my exploring the area, my parents decided to go to the nearest police station. Upon arrival at the local police station, my parents found me there being played with by one of the sergeants on the shift. According to the story that my parents were told when I was found and taken to the station, I didn’t shed a single tear from being afraid. It wasn’t long after that I chose to make getting lost in the neighborhood, a weekly event. I found it amusing to see my parents punish my siblings for the actions that I would take as an infant. I came to realize later in life according to others that I should’ve been afraid. I was an infant and like most infants, I didn’t know that being afraid was something that I was supposed to be. As young children, we don’t know that there are individuals out there who would gladly take advantage of us, or even worse. As children, we tend to see the fear in our parents’ eyes when they are afraid for us, even when there’s no reason to be afraid at all. Shortly before my fourth birthday, my parents broke out the big guns. They decided to let my uncle move in with us and he became my permanent babysitter. The plan worked like a charm for a while until my uncle came home one evening intoxicated and tried to drown me because I wouldn’t stop running in the house. I was only three years old, I didn’t know anything about disturbing someone’s rest. Good thing for you that he failed at drowning me or else you wouldn’t be reading this book. Needless to say that my parents’ attempt at protecting me almost became a nightmare for them. If you’re wondering why or how my uncle failed at his attempt to drown me, my siblings were strong enough to overpower him. When we’re young, we don’t introduce ourselves to fear, envy, frustration, doubt, etc. We get introduced to those negative ugly enemies by THEY and THEM that are close around us. As a child, we could go outside and play with friends doing basically the same things over and over. Of course a lot of those things that we did as children could’ve gotten us hurt or even killed. We didn’t see the fear in what we were doing and that’s why we did it. The children on the sidewalk playing with the ball that goes out into the middle of the street. If there are no adults around watching, one of the children will dash out into the middle of the street to obtain the ball. Is it dangerous? Of course it is. Would I condone it now? Absolutely not. Yet as young children, we had no such fear. We didn’t have that fear because we simply didn’t know what it was. As children, if we didn’t know what it was, we simply didn’t care about it. It astonishes most adults when a young child does something heroic when in the same situation, most adults would’ve been too frozen with fear to act. The young mind of the heroic child has not been molded to see fear at the same level as the adult. Have you ever seen a child fall on their butt and not cry until an adult comes running over to check on them? Did you ever think that the child was not crying from the fall on their butt, but because of the fear that the adult displays when they come to check on the child? That young child had more times than not, no intentions of crying until the adult showed up and transferred their fear to the child. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the young child will cry of their own free will because of the pain they feel at that moment. As young children, we are not aware of the negative enemies that THEY and THEM are indirectly prepared to pass on to us. Believe you me, when I was born the doctor didn’t slap me on my butt because I wasn’t afraid of him or jealous of the other babies he had delivered. When you see the young child that has not yet learned the negative art of being fearful, that child is looked at in a variety of different ways. Some would say that the child was very outgoing, others would probably say that the child is terrible. When we were children, what was the difference between being shy and being in fear? If you could go back to your childhood and pinpoint the exact time when you finally knew what fear was, would you change it? During our early lives as young children, we’re extremely vulnerable to the unfortunate contents from Pandora’s Box. We seemed to know as young children what makes us laugh, but for some strange reason, we didn’t know when we should’ve been afraid, jealous, doubtful, etc. As a two year old, I was on the back porch of our apartment building playing around some stacks of wood with nails sticking out of them. At the time, I saw nothing wrong with playing around those dangerous items. As a result of not having any fear of those dangerous items, I fell on one of the pieces of wood and a nail cut into my face. Needless to say, my mother was visibly upset at what happen to me, but I saw nothing wrong with me playing around those stacks of wood with the nails in them. The opportunity was there for me to have fun without the existence of fear. Too many of us have totally lost our childhood other than the few memories that we seem to drudge up at will. Our childhood held the secrets of happiness and success for many of us that were gradually tossed to the side as we got older. As youth, we saw things that would amuse us, excite us, or irritate us. Not long afterward, THEY and THEM started introducing us to the very things that would overpower our childhood strengths and abilities. My father thought that my second oldest son was unable to cry simply because he never saw him cry. My son could and would in fact cry at times, he just chose not to do it as often as the other children around him. Besides some of us as children losing our innocence, we also lost the ability to draw upon the lack of knowing about the negative items that THEY and THEM present to us as we get older. I remember when I was in kindergarten and I pooped on myself because the teacher wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom. Some of the kids laughed about the event, others merely stayed their distances away from me until I got cleaned up. Luckily for me I lived directly across the street from the school. As a five year old, I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to be ashamed or embarrassed of pooping on myself when it was a situation that was beyond my control. When I would tell this story later on in my life, I would get the usual THEY and THEM response. The response was usually I would’ve been so embarrassed. I was only five years old, I didn’t even know what being embarrassed meant. As children, we were brutally honest when it came to saying things bad to or about another child. We didn’t know what vindication was until later on in our lives when we were introduced to it. As children, we could get mad at the least thing that made us angry. We didn’t let the anger we had as children push us to a place of no return the way we do now as adults. As children, we could fall and get back up as if nothing happened. We would brush ourselves off and make sure that we were okay. Now as adults, it seems as though we’ll do the total opposite. If we were to fall down in public even if we weren’t hurt, we would just remain down on the pavement out of sheer embarrassment of the situation. Why didn’t we react this same way after a fall when we were children? We simply didn’t know when we were children that we were supposed to be embarrassed. As children, we knew nothing about pride, envy, ego, arrogance, etc. As children growing up, some of us were fortunate to have a home environment that shielded us from a lot of the negatives that THEM and THEY were waiting impatiently to freely give us. What about those children that weren’t so lucky? We do know where many of those children wind up. As the old saying goes, today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. There would be times as young children that some of us would find ourselves saying that we wanted to be someone else. We didn’t know about what went on in that person’s life when they weren’t around, nor did we care. We were children and we just wanted to be like that certain someone. Whether that certain someone was a superhero, a cartoon character, or even a family member. It was who or what we wanted to be at that time in our lives. Of course as children, we didn’t know anything about paying bills or earning a living. We simply wanted to be children and enjoy those moments as much and often as possible. Many of us didn’t want to grow up and face the world as most of our parents and older family members were doing during our childhood. As a child growing up in my household, I witnessed a many of arguments between my parents when money was short and bills were due. I realized later in my life that my parents were also part of the THEM and THEY circle around me. Even though I didn’t have the best childhood, I was blessed to have a normal childhood. Some of the world’s most famous celebrities’ didn’t have a normal childhood. One thing that you and I can be certain of, those famous children also had their lives hindered at one point or another by the likes of THEM and THEY. Of course as young children, most of us did the things that most young children do growing up. We saw things on television that we ourselves wanted to do or be as I mentioned earlier. The little boy wanted to be the cowboy that rode into town on his horse with his guns a blazing. The little girl wanted to be Cinderella at the ball without the evil stepsisters. After the negatives started to gradually move into our young lives, most of us started losing that childish imagination that was once so vibrant. It wasn’t that we had to start losing it, most of us started feeling as though we needed to start losing it. You’re growing up now, you can’t continue to think that way for the rest of your childhood. Besides, you don’t need to be ridiculed by the other children now that you’re growing up, you’re almost eight years old. Imagine if this was your actual thinking during this stage of your life. Well I have a big newsflash for you today, for most children it often is their way of thinking. Oh I know what you’re saying right about now, but believe me it’s true. At a certain point during childhood, most children give in to the negative influencing power of THEY and THEM. I did it, my siblings did it, and most of the other children around me during my childhood did it as well. And chances are very likely that you yourself did the same exact thing. If we as adults could’ve had video footage of every minute of our childhood, we would quite possibly be able to see where the changes started. Oh you can rest assured that we would see some very funny moments on those videos. We would also see some moments where we would start asking the why did I do that questions. As young children, most of us couldn’t seem to wait for two of the biggest events of each year. They were the start of the new school year and the end of the school year. For me it was simply to show off my new school clothes that my parents had gotten me. After about the second week of school, I was already out of new clothes and ready for the end of the school year. I’m sure this sounds quite familiar to a lot of you reading this book. I hear you all saying, yep, Ronnie is absolutely right. I know I wasn’t the only child that felt this way growing up. As children, life seems so free and joy filled without the ugly realities of the negative monster living under the bridge. Some of the things that we let go as children, we should’ve held onto. And some of the things that we hold onto as adults, we should’ve let go a long time ago.

You plant the seed, and then watch it grow. You learn the lesson

and think you know. You heard the words and you didn’t forget

You did things in your life that you sometimes regret. You see

the things that make you smile. You realize daily that your faith

is on trial. You can accomplish your dreams if you believe this is

true. Because when it comes down to it, this is all about you.

Like children do today, we took for granted the things that we found exciting and interesting during our childhood. We carried heavy books in our hands during our childhood. Nowadays, children are carrying iPads, cell phones, Kindles, etc. Of course technology isn’t the same now as it was when I was growing up as a child. The Flintstones and the Rubbles were some of my best friends. I’m talking about the cartoon characters that I watched on television. I’m not prehistoric in age, let’s get that cleared up right now. I had to learn certain things in a different way that was considered by some to be strange or unusual. Like most children growing up now as well as during my childhood. The predator is always out there lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on its next victim. As children, we were always susceptible to any type of lure that appealed to us. Even as adults, most of us may not be willing to admit that we were at one time or another this exact way. When we would be scared as children, we wanted our parents or older siblings to protect us from the boogeyman that didn’t exist. Of course we didn’t learn until later on in our lives that it wasn’t that boogeyman that we needed protection from. The protection was needed from the negative twins, THEY and THEM. As children, there were a lot of questions that we didn’t ask. Some of these questions we didn’t know how to ask, or we were just merely afraid of the answers that we thought we would receive. In school, there were certain teachers that would tell us that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. A lot of us learned this as children yet, we seem to not take heed of it and ask the questions that we should ask. Oh I’m sorry, I forgot you’re an adult now and you don’t want to embarrass yourself by asking that question. Would you have been embarrassed to ask a question when you were a small child? The odds are, you probably wouldn’t have. But since you know what kind of irreparable damage embarrassment can do to you, you don’t want to chance getting egg on your face. There are so many of us as adults really need that joy and freedom in our lives that our childhood gave us. Yes I know, you’re a responsible adult now and you can’t afford to feel that way again. Beside you’re a parent now, is that your excuse? THEY and THEM didn’t rob you of your joy and freedom when you were a child. THEY simply stored it away somewhere in the hopes that you would never find it as an adult. Well today is your lucky day. You and I are about to defeat THEY and THEM once and for all. By the time you finish this book, you’ll know how to rid yourself of the THEY and THEM negatives forever. If you could go back in time and change anything during your childhood, would you do it? Of course you would, most everyone would. We all had some unfortunate events that took place during our childhood. Do you remember the first time that you ran thru the house naked as a baby? Like most children, you thought it was fun and saw nothing wrong with it. You probably thought to yourself, I’m free and having fun so let the poop fall where it may. Of course as you got older and received scoldings from your parents, your bare naked butt races thru the house diminished. As a child, you nor I really didn’t know what THEY and THEM viewed as being worthy of the dunce cap award for being stupid. We were merely children growing up in a household that we considered for the most part being our own little world. We didn’t know what rejection felt like as young a child. All we knew was that we were just told no, so now on to the next adventure. Once we were told no, some of us may have sulked for a brief period. After the brief moment of sulking was over, we were already to get the next party of fun underway. As adults now, we handle sulking in a totally different way, don’t we? Some of us go so far as to hurt ourselves and others, or even worse. Can you honestly tell