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I seldom want to comment on the woes of the world.  Like everybody, I’m tired of reading about kids killin’ each other.  Or about abductions, rapes, and acts of evil that are beyond the scope and range of most nightmares but unfortunately exist in our daily lives. 

Headlines of senseless tragedy keep hittin’ closer to home. 

In my younger years, I was no stranger to unpleasant things. By all rights I should be a statistic by now.  For anybody too curious about that long-past life, I invoke the 5th.  Here’s my point, though…. I saw more than most, up close, but I never imagined the headlines we have today.

I’ve tried to figure out what makes each generation seemingly more violent than the one prior. Why the news broadcast of violent crime sponsors copycat crimes that seek to up the ante.   Is everybody on crack?  What gives?

I had a discussion with another good friend and cousin tonight - she who made this site for me - and she speculated that it was poor parenting, an absence of moral upbringing in families, and so on.  I agree with that, but then in my private musings I further pondered why I never freaked out on the level we see in the news today.

After all, I had access to weapons as a kid.  I grew up fatherless, my mother was absent during my teen years, and I grew up in poverty.  I was chock-full of angst, anger, fear, and I had a strong disrespect for authority.  I carried some hate.  I’d suffered violence.  I didn’t feel particularily loved and I never felt safe. 

Why didn’t I freak out?

The only answer I could come to, is that I had somehow established a sense of honor early enough in life, that the thought of taking my anger out on the world, never occurred to me.   

Honor, and a personal code that had more grey in it, than black and white.  But there were lines I would not cross.   There were limits.    Those limits were seriously challenged more than once, but they held. 

How did I establish any sort of honor, under adverse conditions?   I don’t know for certain, but here’s a few things that worked to my favor.

I had a love for animals.  They were my closest companions and taught me about unconditional love.   

I appreciated that which could not be owned.  Nice weather, the blue of the lake and sky, the green of an open field.   I felt connected to nature. 

I read books.  Comic books on up to full-size novels, as a kid.  Westerns.  Civil War stories.  And one of my favorite books as a kid, was The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White.   The humor in it amused me, and I must have checked it out of the school library a dozen times.  The signifigant ideas within it -  that anyone, perhaps, could be of noble birth and despite humble beginnings, aspire to greatness - didn’t conciously hit me at the time. Only now as an adult, do I look back and go, “Holy bleep.  Something sunk in.”    Moral ideas were programmed into me by what I read.  It was a start.

I had friends. Most of them were the wrong side of the track.  I did have one white sheep in the bunch, who was from a very God-fearing family, and I thought they were around the bend somewhat.  I was not well-received by my friend’s parents, as I swore a lot and dressed aggressively.  The only way I could see my friend after school without her getting in trouble, was to attend some of youth church funtions.   I became part of a positive group and learned about faith. 

I still resented authority, however, and I hated school with a passion.  But I had a couple of talents that some teachers attempted to nurture.  I become involved with art, with band, and the high school newspaper.  The taste of recognition and the encouragement kept me in school, even when I was out partying until 3 a.m.  

As an adult, I hit moral crossroads time and time again.  Sometimes I turned in the wrong direction.  I never crossed those certain lines, but I did make some serious errors to my own grief.   At the breaking points, I had a couple of guardian angels step in, disguised as friends.  (You know who you are.)  

I’m not suggesting that there’s any quick-fix to turn some kid around.  I do believe, however, that every child needs to develop a sense of honor.  I can think of nothing else that explains why kids from good families can still go bad, or why troubled kids can to go lengths beyond our worst imaginings. 

The absence of personal honor leaves the doors of conduct wide open to anything.  Even our politics, our corporations, seem to lack a sense of honor.  Hollywood certainly can’t claim a sense of honor.   I sincerely doubt that video games teach a sense of honor, and if you’ve got one, you probably lose points for using it.

What teaches honor?  Everything.  The books a kid reads.  The TV shows watched.  The Bible.  The value sets of people around him.   I think any kid needs decent attention and a sense of belonging and acceptance to a positive group.   He also needs to have recognition for self-esteem.   The need for love is obvious, but above and beyond finding love from parents, or relatives and friends….a kid needs to have some self-love, too.