The majority of people have been seduced by our soft society. They are led to believe that life is supposed to be comfortable, easy and that they should go unchallenged.
I write this not only as a teacher but also as a student. I write this because I have been held to task and I have been let off the hook. I write this because I need to become better and it isn’t going to happen unless I hold myself to a higher standard. There are no schools for me to go to. There are no more training programs that will take me and force me to achieve.
I am 58 years old. I have had an incredible life up till now. But that past 18 years have been bad for me in many respects. I can’t blame any of it on anything else but myself. I am a victim of my flawed thinking and poor judgment. I didn’t take the advice of people who actually knew what they were talking about. While always striving to do what was right, I was doing what was wrong, because of inaccurate thinking, not truly following my heart and the allowance of distractions in my life.
We cannot go back and change the past. We can only change the future. What was once 50 or 40 years of living left, now it is down to 20 if that. It is late in the game to be starting over, but that is where I am and that is simply the way it is.
All of my friends, family and acquaintances are looking forward to retirement and they surely deserve it. I on the other hand am just like a kid graduating high school, walking out the front doors and facing a world of unknowns. Honestly, I have no idea what I am going to do, but I do know that I must do it better than everything I ever did in the past.
So when I watch this video above, I am inspired by it because it is what I need to hear right now and I know that everything he is saying is true.
There are a couple of things that you have to realize when you listen to the above video. As a student in training for the Navy Seals, you are getting paid, you have your housing provided to you, you have full health benefits, and know that they are not going to let you die, unless you get eaten by a shark or freak out in pitch black water, which tests you wouldn’t go through
In the “real” world, none of your needs are met. You have to arrange for them. So, you spend a lot of time just making sure that is taken care of, which for most people is a full-time job. As much as I admire this Admiral and all military personnel, they are government employees with full benefits and have been supported by taxpayers money their entire careers. Do they deserve it? Yes, of course. All I am saying is, the normal people in society are on their own and the government keeps making it harder and harder to survive.
So, when I take stock of myself, the American society, and observe my college students, and my voice students, I realize that there is a real problem with general toughness and dedication to excellence.
It is my opinion that our society has grown very soft. People don’t want to be told anything they don’t want to hear. Everything has to be delivered with Kitten gloves, so as not to shatter people’s fragile egos.
The real challenge of my life, and that of American society as a whole is to raise our standards in terms of doing the right thing, the right way, and with zero room for error.
It makes me sick to my stomach when I see schools lowering their standards so more people can go to college, graduate from high school or that you can’t make a class too hard because they aren’t capable of it. To me it seems as if a university has become a remedial institution. Today, everyone gets a pass because of this or that issue.
The truth in life is that if you don’t know how to swim and jump in the water, the ocean doesn’t care what your reasons or excuses are, you will drown.
So, when I listen to this speech, it is like I am also a graduate from college. There are many things that I have to shore up in my life and it must get done quickly, and well.
I will say I love what he says about singing and it giving you hope. It does. Music lifts you up and gives you a strength that is not really easy to measure, but it definitely is a strong and important part of my life.