I was doing some thinking one day, which I find I do best while driving, and I started thinking about a couple of issues. Fortunately, I was able to retain a lot of what I was thinking about long enough to be able to articulate it into words upon arriving home.

On patience:
With patience comes love, compassion, and empathy. It is never a virtue to be quick to anger. Patience requires discipline in holding back that impulse to react in a negative way. By imposing that discipline upon yourself, you're modeling discipline itself.

On raising children:
You have to go beyond seeing your children as these little creatures whom you could coerce, strong arm, and with whom to bargain to do your bidding. You have to look at them each as the person they will potentially become. Parenthood requires some ability in predicting the future especially when it comes to how your behavior will affect them down the road of life. It's much easier to think about all the good attributes you want them to have as an adult. But, to think about which attributes you don't want them to have requires taking some steps back and realizing that you, as their parent, are their very first teacher and role model and is therefore a major contributing factor to their outcome. To have raised an adult who posses more negative attributes than positive ones is like having soiled hands which no amount of washing will make clean.

Mind you, just because I think these things doesn't mean I live it every moment of every day. I am human after all and am prone to shortcomings. But I try my best and am hopeful that one day I will attain at least a 90% success rate on a consistent basis.

"So what brought this on?" one might ask.

I came across my old junior high and high school yearbooks and I realize that a lot has happened in the last 10-12 years. I never would've thought I'd be where and who I am today. A lot of what people have written in my yearbooks pretty much mostly say the same thing: I was fun to have around, I was funny, I was crazy, I made whatever class I had with him/her fun, etc. and that I should never change.

I say "mostly" because some of the well wishers were teachers and they had written pretty neutral notes to be polite...or to save the energy in being original for I imagine they had written the same thing in dozens of their other students' yearbooks. I know I would do the same thing.

As for not changing: Well, I did. I had to.

Looking back on my behavior during my junior high and high school years, I can't help but cringe. Yes, I was funny, I was crazy, but boy, was I annoying. Come to think of it, my friends were also probably being polite themselves.

"So what brought this on?" one might ask. It's the dawn of a new year: 2006. It's been 10 years (well, almost) since I graduated from high school. A lot of people look back on their high school years with a lot of fondness. They might recall some great times with friends. They'll reminisce on how they got to experience the typical teenage milestones (i.e., first dance, first date, first kiss, first car, etc.) during high school and overall, they just had a blast. Well, I can't relate with them because I was not one of them.

I was not pretty enough to be asked to dances nor (and possibly, thusly) did I have any semblance of a love life. I was not popular - not even close. I may have been funny, but my humor was not universal enough to appeal to everyone. Yes, I was funny to the friends I managed to have (God bless them), but to those who were not my friends, they would much rather kick my ass.

High school, for me, can be summed up into two emotions: embarrassment and fear. Pretty much from ages 12 through around 19 and a half were the most awkward and confusing years of my life. Trying to figure out what was going on with my body and mind AND live life as normally as possible was pretty difficult to juggle. A lot of the things I tried to do to be myself ended up a disaster, hence, the embarrassment. If I was not already feeling embarrassed about myself, I was afraid that something embarrassing will happen. It's a miracle that I didn't remain petrified all that time and was actually able to accomplish anything.

I think being somewhat of an outcast was more to my benefit. After all, it makes sense to not fit in especially when my ambition was to not be like everybody else. To be motivated in that way has helped me strive towards better circumstances, for instance, getting a college education and completing within a reasonable time frame (in 4 years as opposed to the typical 5+ years that some of my peers took to attain their degrees, if at all).

What's my point? I could go around bitching about what a bad experience I've had in high school or I could relish on the fact that it was actually after high school when life really began for me. The decision is mine and I choose the latter.