Fill In The Blank Friday

Letters to My Children

This is the 46th part of Letters To My Children. Some

might call me prolific. I think mothers tend to feel

there is always something more that could have been

said. ;)

For those of you who've been following along, you'll

recognize'Sometimes You Need A Base Hit'.

For those of you who are new, first - WELCOME!

Here's a bit of background:

When my grown daughter, Kaitlin, was a baby, I

started to make notes of things I wanted to tell her

when she got older. Part of me was afraid, if I died

while she was still young, no one else would know to

tell her these exact things.

(ButIwasn'tneuroticoranything!)

That note-taking process continued for fourteen 


years and then I began to write a series of short 


letters to both of my children, each letter containing 


one important message. When I had completed the 


series, I copyrighted them and they were printed in 


three short books called"Sometimes You Need a Base 


Hit" (volumes 1-3). Remember, short letters for even 

shorter attention spans!

Dear Kaitlin and Casey,

About wanting versus needing ~

                Look around you and tell me if it doesn’t look as though America’s favorite pastime is acquiring things.  Okay, so maybe it’s second to worrying!  If you ask me, acquiring things is a symptom of a human need to fill a void that can’t possibly be filled by any material thing.  (But that's a subject for another time!)  It’s all-consuming and it’s wasteful. 

                Many people define themselves as the sum total of what they own, live in or drive.  There are even people who are only interested in how much everything costs and how much everything is worth.  All of this nauseates me.  I gave up “keeping up with the Jones’s” in my twenties, when I realized that the Jones’s were boring and unimaginative, and I didn’t want the same things they did anyway.

                There is a different between “wants” and “needs”.  “Needs” are essential to everyday life and survival;  “wants” are be anything else.

                You know, you're not going to have everything you think you might want in life.  As a matter of fact, I'd bet most of what you think you want, you only think you want.  If you hold off in your efforts to obtain things, you'll find that, over time, you'll lose interest in them or they become less important to you.

              If you can avoid getting caught up in this syndrome, you'll save yourself a lot of time and money.

                                                               

Love,  Mom  

                                                               

Dear Kaitlin and Casey,

    About who you are ~

                You are who you are today BECAUSE of everything that has transpired before in your life, not DESPITE it.

                Do you think you can make it all the way through your life and not blame your parents, a teacher, a boss, SOMEONE, for how something turned out?  Well, you’d be the first!  Can you imagine never having the thought, “THAT’S NOT FAIR!”?  I  can’t.  Would it be possible to never once wish for a different ending to some situation or experience?  Possible?   Maybe- but highly unlikely.

                You won’t be the first one to experience bumps and bruises.  But guess what?  Those unpleasant things, those failures, provide us with the lessons upon which we build our individual character.  You bring all of your experiences to the table with you everywhere you go in life.  The more you learn, the better prepared you will be for the next hurdle.

Love,   Mom