Stranger Danger

when it comes to avoiding weirdos, are you smarter than a 5th grader?

EBONY
By Eric Easter

 In my East Coast all boys high school there was a known pedophile among the football coaches. His predilections were acknowledged openly by the victims’ brothers, several of whom also attended the school. All of us on the sports teams he coached knew it, as did the students in the academic classes he taught.

I’ve talked to many of my former classmates about this over the years and one troubling similarity comes out –  none of us ever said anything. Not to the principal. Not to our parents. At that point, most of us had long ceased communicating trouble – or anything else for that matter – at home. Not to mention that the guy was the coach and the one teacher you had to pass to graduate. We didn’t want to cross him in fear of not getting into college.

Stories like that happen to hundreds, maybe thousands of people each day. Both the weirdness and the silence. People around us exhibit bizarre, sociopathic, dangerous and otherwise anti-social behavior and we take much of it in stride, as long as they don’t get too close to us personally. The people become the subject of jokes, rumor and happy hour talk, but too rarely police reports.

In the best cases, those people go away to bother someone else. In the worst cases, we have Columbine, Virginia Tech, postal rages and the hundreds of cases of missing adults that have become the lifeblood of the 24-hour news networks.

What is perhaps most striking is the dramatic difference between our lackluster response as high school students versus what it certainly would have been had we been in kindergarten. At a mall in Washington DC I once saw a three-year-old girl who was separated from her mother. As adults gathered to help her and ask her name, she yelled at the top of the lungs, “Stay back! You’re not my Mommy!” Good for her. Her screaming and the scene she caused was much more effective than any random search effort for her mother.

With the help of media, we have now institutionalized the system of child protection. What parents don’t teach, schools reinforce, and a whole new market of stranger danger videos drill in with emphasis. The irony here, of course, is that according to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the vast majority of children who are kidnapped are actually abducted by family members or people known to the family, not complete strangers. Still, the end justifies the means.

But after a certain age, generally around 13, we begin to abandon the natural parental instinct to instill fear in our children of other people, and start re-prioritizing danger from the people they meet to the things they do – driving, skateboarding, drinking, freak dancing. At that point, we treat our children’s dealings with people as part of the socialization process. When faced with troubled personal relationships, we too often offer advice on how to get along, and not how to screen, avoid and emphatically end those relationships.

By late high school and certainly by college, the die is cast. We let our loved ones go with a “be careful” and a silent prayer. The screening of friends ceases and an illogical trust in common sense prevails.

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Why You Must Confront Your Weakness

Strengths vs. Weaknesses

by: Justin Tillman

In the last post I spoke about identifying your strengths. In order to find your purpose, it’s important to identify the things in which you are naturally good at because we all have different intelligences, strengths that make us unique.

Along with finding your strengths, it’s equally important to identify your weaknesses.

See in school we are taught to identify our weaknesses, and then turn those weaknesses into strengths so that we will become a well rounded person. At school if we got 3 A’s and 2 B’s, this would be a good indicator that you were on your way to success. However, think about that poor kid who got 1 A and 3 C’s and 1 D, he was thought to be prepared for a rocky road ahead.

Now take a step into the future a couple decades later, after the school days straight into the real word and take a close look at how you make the majority of your important decisions. Think about the doctor you searched for, the accountant you choose or the lawyer you picked. You and I, look for the people who are the best at what they do, which typically tends to be their profession.

We have absolutely no interest at all with the things that we don’t need them to do well in, right? How often do you think, before I hire my accountant I’m going to make sure he A’ced biology? I’m willing to bet, never.

See, I believe that it’s totally cool from a personal growth prospective to improve yourself in areas in which you are weak. There is certainly an intrinsic value to becoming a well rounded person, the rewards that you will received from overcoming your weaknesses will be an intangible sense of peace, happiness and fulfillment.

However, for the prospective of finding your purpose and living life on your terms by doing what you love, it’s critical to give up going through another precious moment of life struggling to strengthen yourself in areas in which you are weak.

Diversification Makes You Mediocre

Hardworking and motivated people, love the concept of diversification because it’s a natural outlet to plug into and frankly it feels the like the right thing to do. Even if they are tirelessly spinning their wheels as they drain their energy focused on doing things that they are not naturally good at.

Most people have developed a negative perspective about their weaknesses. They feel ashamed for not being able to perform at a well in areas in which they are weak. Being ashamed about something tends to lead to guilt. Guilt is something hard to forget and even more difficult to let go.

So as a natural response to dealing with their guilt about not being strong in a particular area people will ignore this fact and continue to try and compete against others who are much naturally stronger.

As opposed to letting go of doing things they are not naturally good at, people have made it easier to be mediocre then to confront reality and admit that we might never be good at something.

If you continue to hold this perception about your weaknesses than you will never reach your full potential.

 

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