On the Color of the Clouds

The Challenge
By JV Deacon With her newly acquired southern accent, Taylor Swift sings her song Mean. At first look, it would seem that what Taylor is singing about is a person that was mean to her just for the sake of being mean; that the individual was mean because they must have had a rough life. If that was true, then Taylor is a poorer person for capitalizing on someone elses misfortune and even sadder for resorting to name calling with absolutely no basis; in essence, she has allowed herself to slip to his level. Most did not seem to realize this because she is pretty and a highly marketable princess. They thought of how she was brave and standing up for herself. From what I have heard from a very reliable source is that she had read a critics review of her performance. It was a criticism from which she could have learned but chose instead to stump her foot like a princess and attack the critic and make another million from her listeners who like to think of her as a hero. To me, Taylor is okay and is incredibly repetitive. If she challenged herself and actually experienced life, she may be able to offer her audience something real and original instead of a high school kids tirade. Any challenge is a chance to learn and grow. It is a chance for you to become more of a person and less of an animal. Most religious texts tell us to confront our challenges and to grow (the book of Mormon I think is the exception; its hero waits until his enemy has fallen asleep in a drunken stupor and kills him, much unlike David or Muhammad who faced their demons and challenges wide awake.) It is the growth that can only come from facing a challenge. However, I cant blame Taylor, her reaction of launching an attack and blaming others should be our true national motto not E pluribus Unum. We are so quick to shift responsibility that is why insurance does so well. Instead of pushing ourselves to be careful, courteous, and alert drivers or taking care of ourselves by eating well and getting plenty of exercise, we pay someone else to do it for us and taking responsibility for our actions. In relationships, instead of challenging ourselves to reach one another and working to overcome the challenge, we run away. It is truly amazing to me that when a couple breaks up how much it sounds like kids on a high school playground. It is amazing how much of the blame is the other person. Yes, there are times that cheating is a definite sign of immaturity and self absorption on the cheaters part, but there are infidelities that occur because of a drift. The drift or chasm comes from an impasse that has occurred in the relationship somewhere. I see so many relationships that could have gone on if only both persons involved had made a true effort to face the challenges and grow. Ive been very fortunate. My spouse is more than willing to face a challenge and grow. It is amazing how she has grown but yet is the same fun person I first met, just wiser. There are things that she never did before that she now does and the same with me; yet, personality wise, she is still the same person. We dont have a master/servant relationship; it is one of equal partners. She doesnt always agree with me and I dont with her. Sometimes we do argue, though I cant remember the last fight. I do what I can to help her understand my side and she does the same to me. There are times that we dont see eye to eye but we do try our best to get our point across and work out a compromise. No doesnt mean no in our household; it is a challenge to overcome and we do face it together.

It is hard to blame people for running away. When are the most of us really challenged anymore in our formative years? When I was in school, we were taught to respect our teachers and other adults. We were also taught that there are some that will try to take advantage or hurt you. For them, we were taught what to do. A bully was a fact of life. We were taught to deal with them. It was a valuable lesson to learn, for the rest of life is filled with bullies. Bullies for the most part are needy individuals who can only build themselves up by putting others down. I have seen bullies all across the spectrum including coaches, teachers, police, politicians, managers, bosses, and other students. I look at them and think, yeah, so what, and continue on with my life. We were taught to deal with disappointment through not being able to make the team or not getting a good grade on our work. They were challenges to practice harder to make the team or to do a better job on our next assignment or test. Weve taken the challenges from our kids and robbed them of chances to grow. There is a no tolerance for bullies, there are teams that no child can be cut from, and I read of a case where a teacher gave a class on plagiarism. She taught the students what it was and why it wasnt allowed. She then assigned them a paper to write. About half of them plagiarized someone elses work. Some just printed their papers directly off of the internet and put their name on it. She failed those that obviously plagiarized. Parents went ballistic and she was forced by the school board to change the failed papers to As and she promptly quit afterwards. All those kids were taught was that if they kicked and screamed enough, they will get what they wantthat rarely works in everyday life and if it does, it is in most cases only tolerated for a short time. I believed that I read this story in our local paper and it had occurred in California. When I was working with troubled kids, we learned how to deal with things from a book and workbook. I honestly do not believe that any of these kids had any idea on how to deal with things from this book. Challenges in life are the only way you can truly learn to deal with things and grow; the book lessons missed one element and that is emotion. Ive also noticed that more and more young people do not have the skills to deal with the challenges that come up in life or are willing to take responsibility for what they did; hit and runs with motor vehicles seem to be rising. I knew a young lady who was studying to become a police officer. Once there was a heated argument at work between two older individuals and she was right there. This aspiring young police officer dealt with seeing this by going into the break room and sitting in an almost catatonic state for the next hour and a half. This was a girl who had never had to really deal with anything because she was raised in a kinder, gentler, the violence of Bugs Bunny free world and she was training for a profession that has to deal with things that of which, she literally had no experience. She has hardly been the only one that I have seen do this but it is just that her reaction to something that was actually resolved by the two arguing quicklythey grew up in a time when kids were allowed to be challengedand her chosen profession were an interesting twist. Personally, I think that most of the school shootings have happened because these are kids who have never been challenged. They are kids that have been told that everyone is special. They have never had the opportunity to have to learn to deal with disappointment or failure. When a girl turns them down, when they fail at getting a job, when they are picked onit is impossible to do away with bullies no matter what rules you have in place; you will always have desperately needy peoplethey lash out. They lash out the way the world and adults have taught them when things dont go their way by declaring war. Angelina Jolie, our government, and many others have taught us that when you have to deal with adversity just shoot them, blow them

up, starve them out by putting on trade embargoes unless they are very profitable to our big businesses like the Peoples Republic of China has been. Our societys way of dealing with problems along with running away is to eliminate them. Prison is not the answer. War is not the answer. The death penalty is not the answer. No matter how many people are executed, there are always more on death row. I think that most of the scriptures say that thou shall not kill because killing is too easy, that we need to challenge ourselves. Striking back is too easy, especially when you or your love ones arent putting your ass on the line but it is the poor who need a job. This was the whole point of Rangels attempt to pass a universal draft that had no loopholes. He believed that if the true powers in this country had to risk their children that they wouldnt be too quick to risk yours. We lashed back at Iraq and Afghanistan for what happened on 9/11 even though the bulk of the terrorist were from Saudi Arabia. On that day, around 3,000 people were killed and another 6,000 were injured. The first thought that came to my mind as I saw the footage on that day, was how horrible and the second was what have we been doing now? Well, we lashed back and we added another 54,000 Americans to the casualty list including about 9,000 killed. Also we have killed and injured over one million Iraqis and Afghanis and it is still going on. With the death penalty, you have the body of the person killed and then you add to that the body of the killer. This also includes all of the effort and resources to convict, incarcerate, house, feed, and kill the killer that could have been used for more positive things. No murder has ever been stopped by the death penalty. No broken person has ever been fixed by locking them away and making life harder for them. Criminals, robbers, drug abusers, alcoholics are symptoms of the illness. Challenges of life are good and something that need to be taken. Imagine what more and more people would be like if they were taught to deal with things. Imagine what our government, our communities, our people would be able to achieve if they learned to deal with challenges instead of running away or lashing back. Imagine what social problems we would be able to conquer if resources used for quick easy fixes were used to focus on the problems. Imagine what Taylor Swift would be writing if she took on the challenge instead of just launching a little princess attack. Imagine how many relationships would be going on strong if we stepped up to the challenges and grew instead of choosing the easy way or quick fix; closing the holes in our life that we wouldnt need things or affairs to fill them. Imagine how we would grow more away from the animal to the human. If you are in a relationship and the other person refuses to try and it is just the same old thing over and over, it is up to you. How much do you really love them? Are they worth the effort to reach them? If they are, you should try again. If they will not even try, you need to move on, life is too short. I am not an expert on anything. I do know that if you are confronted by a challenge and the answer you come up with is running away, killing, stealing, cheating, punishing, delighting in someone elses pain, or hitting, you need to try harder and come up with a better solution. Since the dawn of history, people have resorted to these and I do know that they do not work or solve anything and I refuse to believe that this is the best we can do. My God! Think of it! Look at who we have lining up for the next presidential election. Sarah Palin, a psychotic cheerleader who thinks that an American Legend like Revere taunted British soldiers like a very immature high schoolerexcerpts from memoirs of individuals who were there said that Revere acted very much like a man; a British officer pointed a pistol at his chest demanding information and Revere told him to pull the trigger. She reduces a person like this to some hosed off street punk from Springer. Hell, she is so dedicated to the people, she couldnt finish her term as Governor

I guess it doesnt pay as well or have as many perks as running around the country on her freak show. We have Donald Trump. His idea is to steal Iraqi oil. None of the reasons that we originally invaded were ever proved. We invaded, killed and injured over a million, we hijacked their government, destroyed their infrastructure, allowed contractors like Dick Cheneys Halliburton to make billions off of their misery. (Also from our military, some of the contractors are so interested in major profit margins for their owners that they have performed shoddy work; at least eleven U.S. soldiers have been electrocuted from sub par wiring and you were worried about terrorist killing Americans.) Donald, here is a quick history lesson: A lot of these countries are anti west because for at least two centuries most of them have been raped by western powers, we (western powers) have invaded, hijacked their governments and infrastructures, and killed millions of them. After the colonial period, western powers have still pushed our businesses on them, bribed their governments to let us take advantage of their countries natural resources at the expense of their populations living standards. When we couldnt bribe, we would back the parties and usurpers that were friendly to our agenda; it didnt matter if it was for the good or the detriment of their citizensIll give you a hint, terrorist tend not to come from countries where things are going good nor do dictators or strongmen. This is just some of the many reasons that we have terroristsTrumps idea is just to continue doing what we have done in the pastwhat does he care? His family members will never have to put their asses on the line to protect our nation from these terroristsI mean to protect our big business freedom to go into these nations and do what they want. It does sound like he doesnt mind risking your family. Oh, and then there is Santorum. Why is this guy still around? Time said that it is believed that he helped to author legislation that gave businesses millions in tax credits to companies which researched synthetic fuels. Sounds good until you realize that the most some had to do was spray turpentine on coal and just continued to do it even though it never produced any results other than coal that smelled of turpentine. There is a reason that Pennsylvania got rid of him. We can do far better in all areas if we just push ourselves on the individual level to grow. Our Founding Fathers lived in a time when it was universally accepted that a king and nobility were needed to rule a nation. They challenged themselves and thought far beyond the limits of the box to create the United States of America. We can and must do it to maintain the United States of America.