Congratulations! You are the Time Magazine Person of the Year 2006
Why you? According to Time Magazine, you now control the information age. To show you how important you are a mirror graces the cover of Time, December 25, 2006.
We could change the nature of the question to be more (pardon the pun) reflective. What have you done to become the Person of the Year?
The start of the New Year is often about looking back, while at the same time, looking ahead. One might ask, are you proud of your accomplishments? Have you made a difference?
This poem might help us to think about the opinion that counts more than others.
The Guy in the Glass By: Dale Wimbrow
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass
In the end, your life is about the dash which separates the beginning and end of your life. What you do in the time the dash spans is entirely up to you.
I looked in the glass this year and found a dad who learned and accepted that he has very little control and influence on his son’s life. Sounds bad, huh? Actually not. It has reduced my stress.
My son is 12, lives with his mom, and has little supervision. There’s no encouragement about the importance of education, social interaction, or much else. When I try to encourage him, he bounces the ideas off of her. She will lead him towards the opposite of whatever I tell him, regardless of the result. She does so because it will upset me. Not much unlike one parent telling a child he can’t have a piece of candy only to have the other parent say yes, to spite the other parent. However, the price that my son pays is possibly far greater than a cavity.
While my son’s grades are good, I constantly receive notices from his teachers that he misses his homework assignments, is not in school (when he’s perfectly healthy) and that he’s talking in class. I’ve learned there’s little I can do besides letting him know that i’m aware of these things and hoping that he one day understands that his father cared. I hope that he is eventually able to determine for himself what is wrong, what is right and what will prepare him best to take advantage of the opportunities that life will present.
In the meantime, I will be confortable knowing that I took this bag of lemons and drank some lemonade.
Very useful. I love the way you write. Do you have an RSS feed?
Wow that was extremely insightful, you truly are a life saver! I will have to tell my intellectually inclined friends about this.
Appreciate another interesting post… not always in complete agreement with thing, but always interesting!
sorry for the possible off-topic but I’m going to write about this subject on my website, it’s quite amazing !