February 14, 2018 – March 21, 2018 – what an incredible five weeks for the United States of America!  On February 14, 2018, evil exploded on Stoneman Douglas HS campus!  He was an ill nineteen year-old boy!  A boy who was “CRYING” for help!  People let this evil soul go and go and go!!  Drinking gasoline.  Cutting himself.  Just abusing himself and in the end, he ultimately did the worse possible abuse – killing fourteen high school students and three adults who were taking care of the students.  AWFUL.

Then, we see a national walkout supported by and in some states led by TEACHERS!  There was a time when teachers were instructed to be neutral – part of the bummers of being a teacher.  When one is a teacher (or used to be this way), one knows that a teacher gives up certain freedoms.  Yes.  WE do give up freedoms.  When we were taught to be teachers from 1984-88, we were STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to keep our politics and opinions about “controversial” issues to ourselves.  And now?  Today?  We see teachers walking out with students…students as young as six years-old; eight years-old; ten years-old.  Those students holding signs saying, “NO GUNS.”  When in fact… YES GUNS – because it is a constitutional right to own a gun.  Then, there are teachers who asked, “Well, if this (teacher supporting gun control) is now appropriate, may I (as a teacher during the school day) lead a walkout for PRO-LIFE?”  A Rocklin, CA high school teacher did say something like that and she was placed on paid-administrative leave.  She was placed back in the classroom in days.  Unlike me… me and four other men in three years in a public-school district were placed on paid administrative leave for different reasons.  It took ten weeks to get me back into the classroom.  I am still not happy about that crappy decision.  I still find it very odd that only MEN were placed on paid-administrative leave (sarcasm).  Today is the time of THE WOMAN.  I do believe that if the Rocklin, CA teacher was a man and he actually brought up the PRO-LIFE-WALKOUT topic in his U.S. HISTORY – A.P. CLASS… he would be placed on paid-administrative ———– a lot longer than two days!  Oh, and the latest with that female teacher and her students, the students are going to attempt to lead a STUDENT-LED WALKOUT FOR “PRO-LIFE.”  And so it begins…

Enough about that… I will return to that terrible experience of being placed on paid administrative leave sometime soon!!  You can read it in my book CONDUCTING MY LIFE… I am working on a second book about another paid administrative leave that was due in part, to the paid administrative leave described in my book CONDUCTING MY LIFE.

Then, for a week, we had a 23-year-old set off bombs in Austin and around Austin.  He blew himself up today.  We will know all about him by the end of today (time of this writing — 11:30am; March 21, 2018).  But, what we do know by his actions is HE IS EVIL, AS WELL.  And look at his age.  He is the same age as our super son who is in the UNITED STATES NAVY!!  And look at what our son is doing and look at what this son of a gun did!!  He is four years older than the EVIL that took place at MSDHS!!

So, let me make this simple and brief.

#putothersfirst

We have arrested development in the United States of America.

I cannot prove it …so it is an opinion.  I cannot feel a sense of SELFISH BEHAVIOR from teens / adolescents more than I do today.  I have lived for fifty-two years!   To see all these selfish / violent / hurtful acts is a sign that our nation is hurting.  HURTING!  Let me narrow down my observation to:  TEENAGERS / ADOLESCENTS (twenty-three year-old is on the outside of the ADOLESCENT SPECTRUM).  To see teens / adolescents behave in this manner, we have problems!

We need to get back to the important lesson of #putothersfirst!!  There is NO WAY that these acts were created with #putothersfirst in mind; the center of their mind.  These heinous acts were done in the most self-centered / selfish / “me first” mindset.  We need to get our children to be part of groups that give to others.  What groups are doing that?  NOT ENOUGH AND NOT DONE WELL ENOUGH.

We need our families to make #putothersfirst the center of their family’s mission statement. Families  need to join groups that volunteer to help others!!  The family needs to put away the cell phones and put one another first.  When it is a meal time … that phone needs to be put away.  We need to make others important.  We need to ask one another what they did at school.  Who did they help at school?  Who and how did they add value to someone at school?  I CAN GUARANTEE YOU….. GUARANTEE YOU!!  Less than half of today’s young families are not sitting at a dinner table four-to-five nights a week talking about how they (PARENTS (notice I did not write MOM & DAD – I wrote “PARENTS” purposely with NO GENDER and their children) made others’ lives better that day!  Adding value to others is not part of our culture; let alone, sitting at a dinner table four-to-five nights a week having dinner together sharing stories of the day.

Seeing these actions by the evil on MSDHS campus by a 19 year-old and in Austin by a 23 year-old… seeing more and more children being given medication to take care of their depression / anxiety / attention deficit (and yes, CALM DOWN / WATCH YOURSELF:   there are legitimate reasons to medicate our children and ALSO there are studies that show there are a lot of children being over-medicated); we are seeing the FAMILY UNIT CRYING FOR ATTENTION / CRYING FOR HELP!!

Will it change, Paul?  YES!  But, it will not come back up to how low it has gone down.  It is my new phrase:  SOCIAL-PHYSICS.  Drop a ball and let the ball bounce by itself, the ball does not come back as high as it was dropped.  Socially, we will come back up, but not as high.  How does a ball bounce back to the height it was dropped at?  ENERGY FROM THE FORCE OF THE HAND.  I sincerely believe the analogy of the force of the hand pushing that ball comes from:  JESUS CHRIST!  As Jesus Christ put others first by dying on the cross, we need to #putothersfirst.  The difference of the hand forcing the ball to the height it was dropped from and the “force” of Jesus Christ?  Jesus Christ does not force us to love him / follow him.  Jesus Christ does not force us.  We need to go to HIM.  When I chose to go to HIM, I realized it was the ONLY WAY that I had a chance to bounce back up from being hurt and knocked down.

When we decide to #putothersfirst, we can see a slight-rebound from one of the dates that began the “demise” of the family:  APRIL 3, 1973 when MOTOROLA invented THE CELL PHONE!!  The next date that continued the “demise” of the UNITED STATES FAMILY:  1990 Tim Berners-Lee invented the WORLD WIDE WEB (not Al Gore (Giggle).   Historians can develop a timeline that will show the demise the family.

#putothersfirst BEGINS WITH YOUR FAMILY!