ClydeStyle

Tag: honor

  • Grieving doesn’t have to ruin Christmas

    Every year, without fail, some family is dealing with the loss of a loved one, and it is their first holiday season without the deceased.

    It hurts. There is a serious sense of loss, confusion, anxiety, and sadness. The world has moved on where these families are stuck in time… grieving.

    The following are some real solutions to how to handle this difficult time. Tradition is very powerful, and in our subconscious, we want to make this time of the year as normal as possible. But we don’t have to. The acknowledgment that your family is experiencing one of life’s difficulties is therapeutic. In times like these, we should listen to our bodies. The body will let you know what it can handle.

    1) Cancel Christmas! Treat Santa like you do when you don’t want to participate in trick or treat festivities. You just simply turn your porch light off! Don’t even put up a tree. Christmas will be over before you know it. This gives you the time to reflect and put some things in perspective.

    2) Embrace the alone time and quietness. You have full permission to cry and be alone — there is nothing wrong with that. Especially if you use the time wisely. You always need time to plan and think about your path forward. There may need to be changes made. This is the time to do it! It’s like you’re hibernating until the new year!

    3) Huddle up! This is where you gather together in one place the remaining people who serve a major purpose in your life and you spend the holiday in memory and in celebration of who you lost. This is the private time where each person let’s the other know how important they are, and you can Christmas as a time to express it!

    4) Get out! It’s time to take that special trip you have been wanting to take. Traveling can be very therapeutic, especially if you go to a place that does not celebrate the holidays as we do. This will allow you to retool, relax, and grieve peacefully.

    5) Create and memorial or ritual. This is something you create to honor your loved one. You might plant a tree, create a new ritual, and spend time with specific people. The point is two things: to establish a memorial and bond with close friends.

    Whatever you choose to do, listen to your body. Make sure you eat, get rest, and don’t be afraid to be sad.

  • The sadness of Veterans Day still looms

    Every year at this time, I get sad. I’m sad because I know that there are millions of veterans without benefits. We spend so much of our national budget on weapons of mass destruction and maintaining a strong military, but we’re not making good on our promises to the men and women who risked their lives.

    Neither political party has addressed this. You can see homeless vets, vets on drugs, and more struggling with debt from medical complications.

    Meanwhile, our government, still trying to fight the good fight, is helping other countries  like Isreal and Ukraine while our folks struggle.

    It seems that in the 21 century, we would err on the side of people and rather have a scenario where our veterans are overpaid than under.

    This problem seems so easy to handle, but because our veterans are not useful to our cause anymore, we have thrown them away.

    What’s worse is that there is a divide among the veterans between the ones receiving benefits and the ones who don’t. How can they be a band of brothers on the battlefield, but once we get back home, it’s every man for himself?

    I don’t celebrate Veterans Day because of this. I wish the nation wouldn’t be celebrated either until we have corrected this atrocity!

  • Judges Thomas and Alito are just the tip of the iceberg

    Life constantly proves that we are flawed. As a part of our moral development, we should seek to excel in integrity, goodness, truth, and character, but we have lost our way.

    If we can no longer expect our Supreme Court justices to be honest, how can we expect it in other courts? It seems that there is always a problem when people don’t speak out against injustice. We made that a habit in our country, and it still hinders us today.

    The only thing needed to start a revolution after slavery ended would have been for whites to stand up and acknowledge wrongdoing. If some would have just called it as they saw it because never is it ok to make people property.

    During the Civil Rights movement, our legislative, judicial, and executive branches had a golden opportunity to move our country light years ahead by simply speaking up for what is right! Today, there are horrible police practices that many police, if they were not guilty themselves, could denounce as evil, but they stand silent. Some of the districts that our children are supposed to be educated in are failing. Some of that failure is “teacher failure,” but no one is saying that. Prison conditions in America are deplorable, and very little is being done to change it. Veterans still don’t have all of their promised benefits, but again, we are quiet.

    It’s hard to name an area of interest that isn’t corrupt. Pastors in churches are taking advantage, and some are even getting paid to sell a bad version of hope. And even in the presidency — from Trump to Biden — there are major struggles with integrity and truthfulness.

    Sadly, it seems that we declared independence from the wrong things. Where we should have set ourselves free from lies, laziness, selfishness, and bigotry, we embraced these and would go on to forsake fairness, honor, moral virtue, and serving others. Our freedoms are not for the better but the worse in America. We are free to dishonor our constitution and look out for number one — self!

    There are more justices guilty. We will see more police brutality, bad teachers, and corrupt politicians. And unless there is accountability being enforced, America will implode from within. We won’t have to worry about foreign enemies destroying us. We’re killing ourselves.

  • Is the resurrection still relevant?

    Every year, Christians around the world will celebrate everything associated with Easter. Many will go to church, kill the fattest calf, and lay out an Easter dinner fit for a king – all in memory of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

    Although it is not a holy holiday (none of them are), the tradition of Easter has been blended with Spring traditions, and this is where the Association of Easter eggs comes from. It is said to have been started in Germany where the symbol of eggs carry the thought of new life which happens in the Spring.

    Biblically, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the focal point. But the question today is how relevant is the resurrection?

    Does it matter that Christ died for the sins of the world? How is that shown to matter in your life? What of all the power that accompanied his resurrection which we have access to today — does that matter.

    What of the idea that eternal life is now available to all who believe and are obedient to his calling? To be called a Christian society, we do a horrible job of showing the power of the resurrection in our lives. There are just too many things we don’t care about! Some could care less about abortions. Others care less about school or mass shootings. Still, others never say anything about police brutality or the killing of unarmed back men.

    We don’t care about those with views different from ours. It’s a big “so what” that there are people falsely imprisoned. And of course, not many seem to be too concerned with homelessness, veterans’ rights, and those struggling with mental health issues.

    If the resurrection matters, then we need to use it to resurrect a few of the societal problems we face and solve them for those who suffer. Christ suffered on a cross so we wouldn’t have to. We need to return the favor to those less fortunate.

  • Oh boy, here comes another Valentine’s Day

    Don’t get me wrong — there is nothing wrong with the concept of Valentine’s Day. I mean how could celebrating your sweetie be a bad thing?

    Couples across the nation will celebrate this holiday having dinner, buying gifts, getting all dolled up to make this night special and to renew or refresh their relationship. So why do we need a holiday for that? We need a holiday to tell us not to fight and argue with each other? We need a holiday to tell us we should be nice and not take our partners for granted? We need a holiday to make up?

    Shouldn’t all of these things happen organically? The holiday means nothing if the behaviors and activities on that day don’t match the rest of the year. It’s a miserable life if you need a reminder to do these things. You’re living too fast! You need to set a new pace that allows you to enjoy the things in life that really matter.

    Happily married couples or mature dating partners don’t even celebrate the holiday because chances are they did whatever people celebrating the holiday did yesterday or last weekend. What they do is stay home and make jokes about all the couples out spending money, buying flowers that cost twice as much as they did last weekend, eating at expensive restaurants and making social media posts to prove their love to each other.

    Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye sang a song called “Ain’t nothing like the real thing”. It’s worth a listen not just because it’s a great song but it reminds us what it’s like to yearn for someone and truly be in love. It’s a reminder that life is like a vapor that appears for just a little while and then vanishes away.

    Valentine’s Day is a holiday for the folks that don’t have a good grasp on the concept of relationships. It’s for all the newbies who are still trying to figure it out because the faithful don’t celebrate it, they live it!

  • Self-check time!!!

    I don’t know anybody who likes to be proven wrong. I mean imagine going full throttle in the wrong direction or with the wrong understanding. Some of us are really bold with this. Now there are a couple of different types of people who do this. The first is the one who cannot admit that they were wrong. They put themselves out their so far and look so ridiculous attempting to act like nothing happen.

    Then we have the type that becomes angry and violent once they realize they looked stupid. They will through a temper tantrum to deal with the embarrassment of sticking their foot in their mouth. Next is the type that blames others for their mistakes. They will quickly play the blame game as soon as they feel the consequences of their actions.

    Finally, there is a type that acts like it never happened. They just don’t ever speak of it hoping that it will go away. These types wouldn’t have to exist if we all did a self check. We need to make sure that the information we use to make decisions is correct. We have to be more accountable on the front end to save integrity on the back end. You must ask do I have all of the facts? Am I seeing the full picture? Are my sources credible? Am I emotional involved in this decision? Can I live with the outcome?

    It is definitely worth the time to get the facts straight. In addition we need to surround ourselves with people who would give us the truth. And above every thing else, we need to learn how to give a genuinely sincere apology — people heal faster that way.

  • Living With regret

    I must admit that I don’t normally watch the Oscars, but I am a fan of the industry and I absolutely love Chris Rock and Will Smith. I would like to believe that these two guys would be friends of mine if they were not famous and lived near me. We are in the same age bracket and have a lot of similar qualities.

    Now with that said, I was going to be disappointed in both men for their actions. I was also going to be embarrassed by the actions of both as an African-American male because of the stereo-types that will follow as a result of what happened. And then I wanted to write a blog and explain all the things that they did wrong. Then it dawned on me that context is everything and I was putting these two men in a category they do not belong.

    What I mean by context is that we are witnessing the results of previous interactions we don’t understand or have no full knowledge of. It’s disappointing that the interaction we saw was violent but there is much more to this situation that we may never know about. In addition, if this were just two average men (any race) and one had slapped another it would not have made the news and we wouldn’t be discussing it. Their fame made this newsworthy.

    We place people in categories, sometimes sub consciously, but in our minds we decide whether a person is good, bad, ugly, charismatic, funny or talented among other things. We develop beliefs about these people based on the categories and then expectations are set. Then we become disappointed when our heroes (in this case) do not match the consistency of our expectations. This is what is happening with all the commentary posted on social media.

    What should happen is we realize the truth about what we saw: the fact that these two humans were placed in a human scenario and both had an opportunity to do good, but failed. I truly believe if they had a do-over they could make a better decision. But above everything they proved that they are human and that they are flawed. If they were placed in the “flawed human” category from the beginning, then this interaction would not dominate the news cycle.

    Shout out to Tyler Perry, Denzel Washington and others who tried to bring healing to the situation. Believe it or not, sometimes things are allowed to happened for the purposes of seeing what others would do. God uses this tactic more often than you think. So I wondered how many people thought to pray when the incident happened? I wonder how many others were willing to do what they could to bring healing to this situation? Both Smith and Rock will have many private interactions following this incident. I wonder how many of those conversations would be with people who are trying to honor God in the moment?

    It’s sad when your own actions cause you to live with regret. Every time Will looks at his Oscar, the memory of the slap will come into focus. Every Oscar ceremony from this point on will remember the slap. How many business deals will not happen for these two because of this incident? Have they made peace with their God? Michelle Obama rightfully said that when they go low we go high. Going high requires us to process things in the highest part of our brains — and that’s our spiritual side. I pray the learning curve happens for all who are involved.

  • Gratitude vs. Thanks

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    I was unaware of the symbol for gratitude. Of course, Eastern culture exhibits the symbol as much a we see stop signs here.

    Gratefulness and thankfulness each have its purpose, but have you ever viewed these words as levels of maturity? What I mean is a child will mimic what you say to him, but there will be no emotion behind it and that’s because there is not much intellect behind it. Imitation is what children do and it seems that some people never grow past mimicking.

    We are taught by our parents to say thank you when someone does something for us. We say thank you as a sign of respect. We do it because it’s the “right” thing to do.

    We grow up and understand thankfulness in the context that we learned it as a child. Thankful means to be glad or relieved that someone did something for us. That is a great thing to understand — when you are a kid.

    Gratitude seems to be the next level because it means that you understand what has been done for you and you want to express an inward feeling outwardly. You want to do something because you are moved by what someone else has done for you.

    Wow! That is different!

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    So ultimately our faith must do better than rest at thankfulness because faith without works is dead. So if we understand what God has done for us, then our actions should speak for us.

    So if I am grateful for God’s unconditional love then I will give it to someone else. If I am grateful that God has forgiven me, then there is no way I don’t forgive. If I am grateful that God’s grace saves me from a state where I could not save myself, then why would I not be so grateful as to learn of him and shout from the roof top telling others about him?

    Thankful appreciates. Grateful expresses the appreciation. Thankful shines with a smile. Grateful is a call to action.

    Therefore, I need to be grateful instead of thankful. I need to be more of a doer and not just a hearer that my faith and trust in God may be displayed before the world.

    I give God my thanks regularly, but I need to let him and everyone else know that I am grateful.