shitmystudentswrite:

Most respondents stated that attitudes towards sex changed after the Vietnam and Woodstock wars.

shitmystudentswrite:

Humans who struggle with hunger lose hope, and those with hope don’t have hunger and should give those with hunger, reason to hope.

When I was 16 my Aunt Kathy told me that as I grew older time would go by faster and faster until I found myself old, wondering how it passed so quickly. Seeing as how the previous sixteen years seemed like an eternity, I didn’t see how her words could possibly be true. There were a lot of things of reality that I didn’t grasp when I was a child. For example, I didn’t understand why everyone always said that Christmas came so soon every year when it seemed to take forever to me. Why did people say that my uncle died so young when he was the ripe old age of 39?

The older I got, however, the more I comprehended. Time, like life, is relative to each person. As a child I was growing, learning, developing. In one year I could grow several inches, move from one grade to another and constantly look forward to the future and change. As a child, everything from my body to my mind was developing at such a swift rate that a month could seem like a year to me. I believe that all this change is why children so desperately need organization, rules and boundaries. If they feel regular change, they will at least know that the structure will remain constant.

Upon hitting an older age my body stopped changing as much. Though I still developed mentally it wasn’t near the breakneck pace of my formative childhood years. With less change came less ways to mark the passing time and therefore it seemed to pass much quicker. High School was over before I knew it and before long, college was a distant memory. In settling in to a life in my mid twenties of friends and work time was rapidly going by and I was oblivious to it. That is until my family and other friends started marrying and having children.

In your late twenties you realize that time is indeed, as the elders had said, moving fast. Blink and your twenties are over. Blink again and there goes half of your thirties. Marriage, a giant milestone in which to measure time comes to some as do children. It’s through these children that we can truly measure the time that is passing by observing the rapid growth and development that they display. We are aging toward that certainty that awaits us all. Some will make it farther than others on the timeline of Earth, but in the end we shall all rest with our fathers.

It is the thought of death that leads to these crises of life where we truly contemplate what we’re doing with this short amount of time. In my late teens I initially tried to figure out who I was by deciding what I liked and didn’t like. By my twenties I firmed up the idea of who I was by adding the intangibles of values and personality. Now in my thirties I am figuring out who I’ve become from the man I wanted to be and thought I was. In my twenties I looked at myself, saw the positives and strove for that. By my thirties I’ve been beaten up a little more and optimism slowly and subtly was replaced with “realism” as my parents called it.

I lived my life by 3 simple rules and unbeknown to me it was the key to my happiness. Now I wish to get back to that way of life. I wish to be the man who has a code and sticks to it. Therefore this is my quest to humble myself and once again live by these three rules. One: Always speak positive about everyone and everything and if there’s nothing good to say then say nothing at all. Two: Forgive and forget - the forgetting part is especially important to forgiveness for letting go. And three: Love others with nothing of want. More accurately put is to love others and do not expect them to give more than they are capable of.