Thoughts Become Things: How a Squirrel Changed My Life

By Adam Rounisto

Thoughts Become Things by Adam Rounisto

A debut novel from a promising new voice, Thoughts Become Things is a book about being able to do whatever you want, surpassing set goals, and being the best version of yourself without being restricted by any constraints. Included are chapters with extensive explanations of thoroughly selected content that will help spur you toward achieving set goals.

This book offers readers a plethora of facts, scientific research, and fascinating true life stories, events, and secrets, as well as the kind of real scoop that a lot of other books of the same genre are often reluctant to reveal. It is a well-grounded book that reaches across boundaries.

Thoughts Become Things is written by Adam Rounisto, who is an exceptional board and card game designer, songwriter and recording musician, former CEO and network manager, trained patient care technician, and avid student of knowledge. This book offers a window into the complex and exciting mind of the author. He explains a lot of concepts and theories in the context of our everyday lives and also offers his candid experiences and opinions in a clear and unflinching manner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543444070

Adam Rounisto

Adam Rounisto writes books, creates music, designs games, and anything else that he can get his hands on. Starting at a young age, hes always been most fascinated with creation no matter what form it came in. After having an epiphany at the beginning of 2016, he found a new meaning in his life which made him reconsider all of the unrealized dreams of his past and decided that he would live them out to completion now. He vowed to retrace his steps to what he always said that he would do and this book is the first example of that dedication.

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Copyright © 2018 by ADAM ROUNISTO.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2017912468

ISBN:                  Hardcover                   978-1-5434-4405-6

                            Softcover                      978-1-5434-4406-3

                            eBook                           978-1-5434-4407-0

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: 01/16/2018

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Contents

Preface

A Thirty-Year Dream

Final Notes

Introduction

The Battle from Within

Our Greater Self

My Story

Chapter 1     How a Squirrel Changed My Life

A Squirrel, a Goal, and a Meaning

The Cycle of Recycled Wisdom

Making Your Mark before You Move On

Chapter 2     Thoughts Become Things

The Ultimate Currency

Thoughts: The Building Block of Our Reality

The Power of the Mind

Laws of Creation

The Secret to Life

Why So Secretive?

The Secret

So No Secrets Then?

It’s All in Your Head

Our Framed Reality

Conclusion

Chapter 3     The Monsters under Our Bed

Monsters Are among Us

Sailing to Success

What’s Luck Got to Do with It?

The Circumstance Stance

Creation and Reaction

Learned Helplessness

Nobody’s Coming; It’s All Up to You

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Conclusion

Chapter 4     Belief, Perception, Perspective, Position

The City That Was Invaded by Mars

Perception Is Reality

You See from Where You Stand

Ignorance Is Bliss

The Final Performance

The Paralyzing Effects of Indecision

Interpretation

The Illusion of Getting Away

The Illusion of Time

The Power of I Am

Reticular Activating System (RAS)

Conclusion

Chapter 5     The World beyond Our Reach

A Message beyond Words

A World Hidden from Sight

Green Dot Theory

Analysis

The Hidden World beyond Language

The Meaning Is in the Context—Voids between People

The Invisible Void

A Living Part of the Past: The Piraha

Living in a Water World

The Magic of the Subconscious

Comfortable Mediocrity

The Man who Moved Mountains

Conclusion

Chapter 6     Having a Purpose

Man’s Search for Meaning

Keeping the Fire Alive

Pushing Through until the End

Searching for a Purpose

Control

Dreams

Conclusion

Chapter 7     Human Automation

The Benefits or Detriments of Habits

A Man Stuck in the Present

The Habits That Control Our Lives

Willpower

The Limitations of Our Will

Automating Our Lives for the Best

Chapter 8     The Junk That Occupies Our Mind

A Mind Cluttered with Junk

We Feel as We Will

Our Egocentric Mind

Nobody Cares about What You Think

The Real Physical Effects of Emotional States

Arm Stress Test

Schemas—How We Familiarize Ourselves with Our World

Stereotype Threat

Negativity Bias and Subvocalizations

Letting Go

Cleaning out the Closet and Filling It Back Up

Our Deceptive Minds

Conclusion

Chapter 9     Mind over Matter

The Mind-Body Relationship

The Doctor Deception

The Power of Placebo

Nocebo

Hypnotism

Walking on Fire

Conclusion

Chapter 10   Beyond the Physical: The Final Mind Frontier

Mind beyond Matter

My Personal Experience: A Rose and a Promise

The Promise and the Rose Part II

The Ether: The Liquid Medium of Our Thoughts

The Hidden Message in Water

The PEAR Predicament

Global Consciousness Project

The Resistance

Ingo, the Real Black Swan

Autism and Alternate Communication

Precognition

Beyond the Physical; Something’s Out There

Mind: the Finite and the Infinite

Living in a World We Create

One Final Note about Pandora

Preface

A Thirty-Year Dream

Hello, my name is Adam Rounisto, and I’m a procrastinator. I have a tendency to start several projects at once and then lose interest in them months later, leaving them half-assed and half-finished. I’m often late to my appointments and make excuses when people ask why I haven’t finished what I have started ages ago. I’m inconsistent with my behaviors, and my hobbies are always changing. This isn’t exactly the way I would have introduced myself to someone I have just met, but anyone who knew me a couple of years ago would have noticed these qualities in me based on my actions. If actions speak louder than words, then let’s just say that mine would have been screaming at the top of their lungs. In fact, the sound they would have produced would have easily penetrated into the next city block, disrupting some unfortunate souls who are just trying to enjoy their morning cup of coffee. It was pretty glaring to witness, but that was then, and this is now.

Change is an amazing thing because it can appear to happen literally in an instant. In all reality, nothing just happens out of the blue; however, there is usually a lot of stuff going on in the background that’s out of sight, giving the illusion that the change is sudden. This is similar to what happened to me. Everything that I had studied and learned over the years kind of clicked into place all of a sudden and gave me an entirely different take on life. I guess you could say that I had the opportunity to discover what it feels like when your life changes overnight, and I was so inspired by this that I had to start writing about it immediately, hence what you’re reading. I imagined that if something so simple was able to change my life like it recently has, others’ lives might benefit from it just the same. This is my intention for this book.

I figured a formal introduction is most suitable right now before we get started because this is technically the first thing that I have ever written, and that sounds like a good place to start to me. I do, of course, plan on writing more throughout my life, but this one is special because it’s my first. Being the first of anything, as we’ll discuss throughout this book, is significant because without it, it would be impossible to ever make a second, and that’s a serious problem that a lot of people struggle with. As dreamers, we look ahead to all the wonders that we can imagine; but as realists, we never take that first step because of how unlikely we make things out to be. This inner conflict tends to drive people away from doing what they feel like they are meant for and instead substitute it for what’s more practical. As I found out through a recent experience, however, being practicable is starting to look a lot less sensible than it’s traditionally made out to be. Some things needed to change.

Usually, when people write about their life-changing experiences, they are great tales riddled with theatrics and flare. Sometimes it’s a story about how some kid had to live off the street for years, just struggling to get by, until he encountered an opportunity that changed his whole life and became rich by the end of the book. Sometimes it’s a tragic love story that drives a person to dig deep inside themselves, causing them to invent magnificent contraptions or something that completely revolutionizes the world. Yeah, I would love to tell a story about how I fought lions and discovered the secrets of the universe in the process, but my story isn’t quite that dramatic or nearly as exciting unfortunately. Quite frankly, I have had, until recently, what could be considered absolutely the most typical middle-class life you could expect someone to have. I didn’t have to struggle to get what I had, and my parents were pretty nice people. I never became homeless or had a near-death experience that made me see the light or something like that. I was just living a normal life, like everyone else, until something happened that I would never forget. I woke up.

Sometimes when you are asleep, it isn’t always obvious because the rational parts of your brain aren’t as active as they will be when you’re awake. Your ability to detect something out of place is dampened, and as a result, things that will usually catch your attention pass through without your awareness. If you aren’t under the impression that anything is out of place, then you can’t keep an observant eye out for it because, as far as you are aware, nothing is out of place. Even when something particularly unusual happens in a dream, we don’t pay much attention to it until after we wake up and reflect on how bizarre it really is. Everything that once seems as tangible as our own bodies holds their form until they finally slip through our fingertips like sand as we finally awaken.

A dream plays a convincing role of making us believe that the world it provides for us is the one that must be real, but that all seems to fall apart once we are given the opportunity to look at it objectively. When we are observing it without being under its influence, it becomes very clear that things don’t add up, and we are even surprised that we have ever believed it is real in the first place. It’s easy to look back at a dream as being disingenuous after you have already woken up, but when your head is still cradled on the pillow and the alarm still hasn’t sounded off, it’s an entirely different story. It’s a perfect example of how easily we can be fooled into thinking something is real regardless of how farfetched it might look and how easily we can break that illusion once we are given just a little more insight than we have at the moment.

Most people assume that dreams are meant for when you’re asleep, but that’s an illusion on its own. Life can be just as deceptive so long as you believe in the illusion because as long as you believe that it’s real, for all intents and purposes, it is. Things aren’t as important for what they really are rather than what we make them out to be because what we believe is what we act on. It’s the weight we place on something that really makes the difference, not what it’s supposed to be. We don’t act based on the facts; we act based on how it makes us feel. If we have an irrational fear that we know is ridiculous, knowing that it’s ridiculous doesn’t make it any less threatening, and it definitely doesn’t prevent us from still fearing it. Barriers and limitations that we create in our own minds might as well be barriers in the physical world because they will slow us down or bring us to a halt just the same. Thoughts become things.

Toward the end of 2015, I woke up from what would have been, in total, a thirty-year dream after I caught a glimpse of what I was really capable of doing. It was a seemingly unimportant and unusual scenario, but it happened when my wife and I were moving into our new house, and I needed to secure a safe place for our pet squirrel. Yes, that wasn’t a typo; I said pet squirrel. I had a limited amount of time and no plans whatsoever, but nonetheless, I had to find a way to make it work. Sure, I built a squirrel cage (big deal), but that was only the beginning of the story.

The real wake-up call happened a couple of days after, when I realized how short I was really selling myself on my abilities. That squirrel cage was a perfect example of how I had to make something out of nothing, and I didn’t have the luxury of excuses to fall back on if I ran into trouble. I had to finish it whether I wanted to or not, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many other things in life I could have accomplished if only I would have treated them with the same mentality.

Building that squirrel cage was just what I needed to get me to step back and really start to question what I had been doing all these years. It wasn’t so much that the cage itself was excessively difficult to make or that it was some kind of marvelous creation but rather what it represented. You have to understand that I had never built anything in my life, including one of those little birdhouses a lot of children made growing up. Going from never having used a tool to building a four-foot-tall, eight-foot-long cage that a person could comfortably rest inside of was an incredible achievement for me, and that was just the beginning. Shortly after the squirrel cage, I wondered, Why not write a book? I didn’t have a clue where to start with the cage, and I didn’t have any experience with building; what was so different about writing? Heck, what was so different about anything? That simple thought was the beginning of my new life.

I never would have imagined that something as silly as building a squirrel cage could possibly have such an impact on me; I guess it goes to show that even the most insignificant events in our lives can have really powerful effects on us. Sure enough, it was all it took to get me on a completely different path; and one day right after the other, my life started morphing into something new—something full of purpose and direction. I had finally opened my eyes and seen what I had missed all those years: there are no limits in life. I know, we’ve all heard the old cliché Anything is possible if you put your mind to it, but how many people do you know who follow that dogma? It’s one thing to understand that phrase and repeat it to others, but to believe it is a completely different thing.

I know I have been guilty of implying that anything is possible to other people, but when a difficult task emerged, I found myself making excuses instead of solutions. Now I can’t help but recognize these same kinds of behaviors everywhere I go. People seem to be ignoring their own potential and allowing their lives to become ever more mundane and unenthusiastic. But why? Why would anyone just settle for a mediocre life with an unsatisfied view on the world around them? Why would we, as a society, prefer to give adulation to the greatest minds of our history rather than trying to achieve our own greater heights? These questions shook me up and caused me to make a vow to myself after it all sunk in.

I am not going to allow myself to fall back asleep again. I have stepped away from the grasp of a dream, and I have begun to understand my own involvement with the future and how much control I really have over it. I am not going to give up control over my own life again. I am awake now, and it is going to stay that way.

Final Notes

Before I get into the detail and tell you what’s up with the squirrel cage, I just want to say that writing this book has been an interesting experience overall. My original goal was to have it completed within two weeks because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, but as you can imagine, that was a tall order, and things didn’t exactly go as I had planned. I wrote for several hours a day but to no avail. When the last few days came around, I had barely even scratched the surface. In fact, every week I set a new goal to have it completed by that weekend, but the deadline just kept getting pushed further and further away. I completely underestimated the time it would take, and biting off a little more than I could chew doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s just that I had to continue to rewrite everything because there wasn’t always a nice flow between chapters, and I had the hardest time trying to connect them all together. Still, I feel that some parts could be edited to no end, but that’s just the hypercritical part of me talking, I’m sure. Either way, I’ve grown to accept it because I feel that as long as I can convey the big message, that’s what really matters.

As G. K. Chesterton said, Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. To me, this means that we can’t get caught up in all the details if it stops us from moving forward. This book is an example of that philosophy. As an author, whether this is my first or one-hundredth book, if I have a story or a thought that could help somebody else in some way, it’s worth telling, even if it runs the risk of being poorly articulated. As a reader, I ask, as you progress through this book, that you really dig deep inside yourself and ask if there is something that you have always wanted to do but haven’t because you are afraid at sucking at it. Trying to be perfect is so debilitating that it stops people dead in their tracks before they have even started. Doing something right the first time is a dangerous stigma that our culture has developed over the last hundred years and is preventing so many people from doing what they really want to do.

My goal in this book is to hopefully capture my experiences and what I’ve learned over these years so it can help you as well. It would be a great honor to know that my life experiences and stories might help someone through some tough times or even provide a little insight. Perhaps you will end up feeling compelled to write about your experience too. Everyone has a story they can tell, and maybe you’ll tell yours. Maybe I’ll even have the pleasure of reading about it one day. Who knows? I guess that’s up to you.

Introduction

The Battle from Within

Only the dead have seen the end of war.—Plato

In the year 1519, the voyage of Hernán Cortés and his six hundred men had finally ended as their ships arrived on the shores of Mexico. Cortés knew that the odds were against them because they had only a modest amount of resources, as well as military force, but he was nonetheless determined to make this his next conquest. Mexico had not been conquered for six hundred years before Cortés arrived, and both he and his crew knew it, but that didn’t stop him from giving the order to have the ships set ablaze and burned to the ground. Cortés didn’t give his men a speech like he would have on other undertakings because the state of affairs was already clear to all the men. Once the captain’s orders were carried out, there was no going back. Once the boats had been reduced to searing ash, the crew’s only escape route would be death. There were only two possibilities from that point on, and those were to either be victorious or die.

When an animal is ensnared in a trap and cannot free himself, it’s advisable to approach him with caution because this is when he is most dangerous. Even if your intention is to set him free, he will claw out your eyes in attempt to escape. He is uninterested in the meaning behind your actions because he has become so absorbed with his own impulse to escape that he’ll do it at all costs. The will to survive runs deep within us all, and it comes out the strongest when we are threatened.

In times of war, suicide rates actually drop because we become aware of the dangers that surround us; and as a result, that urge to survive awakens. We feel more compelled to push ahead when our lives or freedom are in jeopardy because there is an inner resilience that drives us to fight back. Having that feeling of do or die was what inevitably caused Cortés and his crew to valiantly pull through to conquer the unconquerable. They were the only group capable of taking over Mexico for centuries before them, and it was all because they were willing to put themselves into a position where failure was no longer an option.

In today’s age, we rarely use swords or a bow and arrow anymore for anything other than novelty purposes because we live in what we call a more civilized society. Our warfare has become less frequent, and we have swapped out our rudimentary arsenal for sophisticated weapons that withdraw us from close proximities of other countries. We have distanced ourselves from the brutality of our ancestors in an attempt to appear more socialized and polished. Food has become more abundant, and disease runs less rampant.

At one point, life has become less threatening, and we have become introspective. We are now able to focus more on our lifestyles in regard to our social relationships, careers, and possessions because we no longer have to focus on a means to survive. Although there is an appeal to no longer having to defend our homelands from possible conquering, we suffer the effects of a completely different kind of threat. Even though new discoveries in technology have made our society stronger as a whole, its people have become weaker. Without that feeling that drove our society to where it is today, deeply rooted in our conscience and everyday mind, we take a less active role in our own destiny. That urge to survive has fallen back asleep, taking our ambition with it.

Think about a mouse running away from a domestic cat. The chance that the cat will succeed in catching the mouse depends on how hungry the cat is. The mouse will always exert all his effort to flee because if he gets caught, it’s his life at stake. If, however, the cat fails to trap the mouse, it’s only his dinner he loses. If the cat isn’t hungry, it’s no real bother to him whether or not he eats because he is only concerned with how he feels for the moment. A cat does not consider saving the food today for tomorrow because it’s not in his nature to think this way. If no other mouse crosses his path, he won’t seek one out until it is time to eat. If he cannot find food for that day, then he will starve because he is designed to be skillful at hunting but poor at hoarding. His ability to survive depends on his ability to act, but he will only act when he needs to because he doesn’t consider the future.

The human mind is much different from a cat’s because, unlike our feline friend, we have the capability to look ahead and make decisions that won’t affect us for years to come. The outermost regions of our brain have developed favorably over time, allowing us to predict, ponder, imagine, and reason, which animals aren’t as capable of doing. It is one of our greatest abilities as a species by far, but in spite of this gift and our sophisticated society, we still tend to behave as if we were no different from the cat.

We live for today and put off what can be done for tomorrow and, in turn, often find ourselves in situations where we are stressed to act lest we suffer. We have become prone to react to our environment rather than to actively create it. Even though our minds are designed for foresight and we are able to plan for our future needs, we still seem to follow the path of a wild animal and only act when it’s necessary. Our lives have become so comfortable that, as a result, we have become complacent. There is no longer a sense of urgency because survival has been taken for granted.

It’s true that we may feel content for the moment, but that inner desire to command and conquer is still deep within us, trying to express itself in any way it can. As we ignore this instinct for too long, we’re left feeling like something is missing in our lives. Unfortunately, we either forget about it or suppress this necessity to thrive because we don’t have enough fire from within us to do anything about it, especially if it involves stepping past the lines of social acceptability. In fear of losing what we think we have, we dare not act unabashed. Our innermost aspirations are squashed, and our burning desires are stamped out as we continue to live a life of diplomacy while our spirit fills with despondency. We may no longer have to defend ourselves from being killed, but that doesn’t mean that we still aren’t under attack. Even in today’s age, we need to fight for our lives because we are at war with ourselves, and we don’t even know it.

Our Greater Self

You may delay, but time will not is probably one of the best pieces of wisdom that Benjamin Franklin has ever given. Although you have the power to remain still and refuse to progress, the world will not cease to spin on account of your decision. The world will continue to evolve, and civilizations will keep on developing regardless of your personal contribution, but the fulfillment behind your own life can only be established through your own individual participation. Some are masters of their own fate, and others merely live day by day, allowing it to unfold as it will. They will surely be born and will eventually die, but what happens to them between those two doorways is a mystery that only they themselves can determine.

We are not a collective group. Rather, we are individual beings with different desires and ambitions. Our ability to choose to stand still in the river of time cannot be taken from us, but that doesn’t mean we should execute our right. How could choosing a path of indifference, void of any ambition, ever benefit us anyways? Perhaps it will give us a life we wished we would have lived but didn’t. Maybe it will bless us with missed opportunities and regrets. The tides of change that are created from the whole can rarely fulfill the needs of the individual. Where we end up is not a product of society but rather the decisions that we have made. The internal battle we all face can’t possibly be won until after we have accepted our responsibility as being a creator of our own life, and therefore, a creator we must become.

Time is one of our worst enemies. It has the tendency to fool us into thinking that we have more of it than we really do. The more of it we have, the less we seem to get done. It may seem counterintuitive when you first think of it this way, but when we have the luxury of time, we tend to squander it because the consequences of the waste aren’t always apparent until we reflect on them later. This makes it exceedingly more dangerous than consciously wasting time because it fools you into thinking you are accomplishing something when really you aren’t. It’s too easy to attribute your delay as calculating your next move when, realistically, you could have just as well made a clear decision with a fraction of the time or no time at all. At least when you are aware of what you are doing, you have the ability to change it, but the nonthreatening nature of the subtle yet frequent waste of time creeps in from the shadows and overwhelms its victim slowly like a silent killer.

What could very well have been the greatest discovery in history, which was held as a seed in the mind of a man, would end up being locked away in a casket and buried beneath us, never to be witnessed. What could have brought incredible benefit to the world would have been forever frozen in time in its most useless, idealistic form. Benjamin Franklin was very clear when he gave us his timeless wisdom, and it’s in our best interest to heed his warning because, even though we may all one day die, the greatness inside us all doesn’t have to share that same fate.

Each one of us indisputably has a greater version of ourselves just waiting to be expressed. It may only be one more book that you have to read or one more lesson that you need to learn, but the gap between being incompetent and being incredible is surprisingly smaller than you might think. The greatest people in history were not in their position because of entitlement; they were built over time through deliberate practice and effort. Whether we achieve that status is completely dependent on the actions that we take and how we choose to spend our time.

The biggest misconception that a person could believe is that some people just don’t have what it takes to be successful or that some of the most successful people gain their status because of luck. The biggest problem with this type of thinking is that it creates an invisible barrier between people and their dreams and gives the illusion that some people just have it in them to succeed and others don’t. People have been fooled into thinking that failure and success just happen rather than that they are really the result of several decisions that have been made over a long period. Failure and success don’t just fall out of the sky onto people’s laps; they are the result of several small choices that people have made over the course of their life and are the direct fruits of their labor. If someone doesn’t see themselves as being competent in the moment, what’s to say that they will ever think they will be competent in the future? Becoming incredible doesn’t need to be any more difficult than the future becoming the present.

There is no definite time where things change and we are, all of a sudden, living new lives. Things are changing in every moment, but there seems to be some sort of disconnection between people’s understanding of their actions and that of their results. I’ve known a couple of people who have had serious complications from alcohol abuse but insist on still drinking on special occasions. I have met diabetics who will still eat cake for dessert at birthday parties and then attempt to compensate for their raised blood sugar by increasing the dose of their insulin. I can’t even tell you how many people have told me that they are planning on quitting smoking as they bring their cigarette to their mouth and light it up.

At what point did today no longer get added into the equation when someone is considering their future? If they aren’t capable of showing restraint right now, on this day, how can they assume that tomorrow will be different? The phrase carpe diem, which translates to seize the day, taken from Horace’s work Odes, is referring to this day, not another. Today is the day that needs to be conquered, not tomorrow. The greatest power we have over our future is what we do now because there is no other thing that can affect what will happen to us but our own actions. If we don’t partake of this responsibility, we will stop creating our future; and instead, it will just happen to us.

It’s important to actively participate in your own life to create your future. Yes, it will take effort, but this doesn’t mean that it has to be a burden. In fact, it’s more of a blessing than anything else. It means that who we are today isn’t bound by who we were yesterday. It means that if you want to start a brand-new life right now, it can be done in an instant. Society has always frowned on the idea of inconsistency because most people like to cling to stability. The idea of a person being amorphous is a scary idea to somebody who is infatuated with the concept of consistency, but nonetheless, it’s only a social guideline, not a rule.

Gandhi once stated that he followed truth and not constancy; therefore, his consistency changed with truth. He believed that society had an irrational commitment to the idea of being repetitive and predictable. It’s no surprise that he was one of the most powerful and influential people who have ever walked on the face of the earth and that the government genuinely feared how much influence he had over the people who believed in him. His mind was flexible; he accepted everything as it was but knew that what he did in the moment would lead to where he would eventually be in the future.

Unlike Gandhi, most of us cling on identity and refuse to allow ourselves to act outside that construct. We choose consistency over truth and become so blind to the notion that we might be wrong, that we live in the darkness until we arrive to it through death. Meanwhile, we forget that there is a contribution to be made today, if we ever want to progress to somewhere beyond where we are now. Our futures fall into peril every time we lose sight of that and when we fail to make our contribution.

It’s all too often that I hear an elderly person say that time has flown by and how their dreams were left behind in their youth. Time has stolen their ambitions, and they didn’t even consider putting up a fight. The threat of losing their future didn’t seem like a threat until it was already gone. The end of your years isn’t the time you’ll want to be reminded of all the things you wished you had done. The golden years will be much better spent continuing to build from the foundation you had started in your youth and reminiscing about all your previous accomplishments—all the things that you are proud to be a part of. We all dream of what a perfect life for us will entail, but how many of us can really say we are there right now?

My mother lived an entire life of what she considered misery. She told me that my sister and I were the only part of her life that she was proud of, but aside from that, she didn’t feel like she had much of a life at all. She felt trapped because she was unhappy with her marriage but was too stubborn to get a divorce because it was against her religion. Her mother always tried to control her life, which she resented, but my mother would never speak up for herself because she didn’t want to cause problems. She had a problem with smoking and poor diet but was afraid that when she tried to take control over one, the other one would get worse. She was always stressed and drained, and her muscles became so tight over the years that she was always in pain. She just wanted to be able to do something that would give her life meaning.

When she did finally get the courage to break free and start over the way she had wanted to for all those years, she was diagnosed with cancer and died shortly afterward. She had reached a point in her life where she was so fed up with her situation that she finally did something about it, but by that time, it was too late. All her pain and regrets that she had accumulated over the course of her life had already torn her up from the inside, and it inevitably destroyed her. She waited until the end of her life before she was ready to contribute to her future, but it couldn’t possibly indemnify all those years she allowed to slip by. There wasn’t enough time for it to matter. She lived her life in the image of consistency, and because she wouldn’t allow herself to become more flexible earlier on, like a dead branch, she broke.

Life is too precious to allow it to be taken away without fighting back. If only we could grow with our dreams always intact as we pass into adulthood, never forgetting our passion. If only we could all be as flexible as the passing days require and gently remind ourselves that when things get rough, today is not forever. Just imagine how much power we really have when we seize this day.

My Story

Let me start by saying that, since the day I was born, I’ve lived what many could consider a typical middle-class life. Our family was never wealthy, but we didn’t struggle to put food on the table either. My parents got along for the most part while my sister and I lived under their household, and there were never any major problems in the family like alcoholism, drug abuse, or domestic violence. The only quarrels that would happen from time to time would be my father’s excessive spending habits and my mother’s criticism of it, but that was all just background noise at worst. It became more of a tradition that went like this: Dad spends money on too many VHS tapes, while Mom yells at him for wasting all the money they are supposed to be saving for retirement. Dad tunes out Mom, and the children roll their eyes and laugh about it later. Ah, good times.

I know a lot of people who would have killed for this kind of simplicity in their life. If a little argument among the family was the worst it ever got, we were doing pretty damn well. Sometimes I feel like I dodged a bullet when I hear about some of the horror stories people tell me about their families and what they had to go through in their adolescence—abusive parents, living in filth, family members being sexually assaulted, you name it. These are the kinds of things that can really warp a person’s reality when they are growing up.

When a person’s map of the world is created out of violent encounters and mistrust of a certain gender or race, there is usually some bad turbulence later in their lives as these character traits start to come out. If these beliefs and biases that they developed through their childhood aren’t dealt with as adults, it’s only a matter of time before they come back to the surface. Unfortunately, most people suppress their negative past; and when they have children of their