PEDESTAL PERSONS
All of us play favorites. Each of us, admit it or not, models himself or herself after someone who has been most influential the form of their way of life.
More likely than not, the model you use is a corporate blending you have build from associations with several persons who have crossed your path .No one person can be as perfect as that one we admire so completely.
That can be a vital point. So many of the choices of favorite people must be creative in the sense that they may come from any level of society – high or low, rich or poor, beautiful more-or-less and it can all be more of a cosmic presence of that special person in our life than an actual physical reality.
Such models as you chose may be held in secret if you wish. Their importance in our life need not be shouted from the rooftops or many public any way. Don't b e disturbed when you can't accept certain aspects of a person's life. Many sterling young men and women have successfully modeled their lives after those inventive, inquisitive and exploratory qualities of such men as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Henry David Thoreau and others who, many will point out, lacked the gene of geniality and found it difficult, at times, to get along well with family, friends, and associates and competently in dealing effectively with common worldly cares an necessities.
Think it over. Who are your models?
I have mine . Do your have yours?
Two or three these people to be emulated will be, no doubt, prove to have been teachers in your early school years, ministers in your religious life, artists - musicians, painters, actors, for example - as well as masons building a temple; a plowman weaving patterns in tree-framed field of loam and clay; a new mother training her child in the best path. Far too often parents - mothers and fathers - and siblings as well, are overlooked.
Be aware of the danger your ideal ones becoming too much of an influence on your life. Try to keep from become a blinds follower of an ideal which does not exist. Try not to duplicate their lives. Be willing -even eager – to accept changes. If not you, too, may miss out on the very opportunity which kept your ideal person from being even more successful than he or she was.
You may insist that you have no such pattern, no such template upon which you conscious fashion much of your life, but you do none the less. There is always he distinct danger that anyone who relies on such hit-or-miss guidance will adhere to the wrong or destructive types of leadership with dismal results assured. Some are so self-satisfied they cannot bring themselves to accept the idea of anyone needing a mentor or guide.
Now, take all of this one step ahead.
To whom are you, yourself, such an ideal? What young boys or girls are looking at the way you are living and planning their lives to fit the pattern you are showing them.?
That's a great responsibility.
A.L.M. September 24, 2004 [c534wds]
