"Never Give Up, Never Surrender!"

      I'll never forget the first time I saw the movie Galaxy Quest with my son years ago. He was seven and I was single again. I have to admit that I felt just a little like the characters who portrayed the cast from the "series" Galaxy Quest in the movie. I had been whisked away into outer space it seemed, with nothing but a few years performance battling "aliens" of one sort or another. Finding myself divorced again, alone with a young son, no job, bills piling up and health issues manifesting themselves, I realized that our ship had become much more than a prop where we were acting out the daily scenarios of life. Suddenly it was our lifeboat in a dark sea of reality. Sole responsibility rested on my shoulders to find a way to navigate through this black hole we had been thrust in at warp speed. It was my job to stand up to those "aliens" that were threatening us. There was no one else to fight for my little boy but me! I had adopted the motto of "never give up" some years before, but finding myself facing an even more difficult challenge, it would take more than not giving up. It would take not giving in.

     Ironically, it was that brown-eyed boy, my "mini me" that taught me what it meant to "never give up, never surrender." From the time he was born, he was fighting things seen and unseen. He beat the odds at birth when he was born three months premature. That thirteen and a quarter inch doll baby was a fighter! No matter what we faced from that time and through the years that followed, my sweet boy embraced everything with an optimistic, loving and unselfish attitude. For someone who was so tiny and behind the curve for the first several years of his life, he was the biggest "boy" I knew. At 24, he is a bigger man than anyone I've ever met! All 140 pounds of him. He is a rare breed in this generation of entitled spoiled "children."

     Looking back at those years I am amazed! I can't lie. I wanted to give in so badly. I wanted to just find an easy way out but I couldn't! I had no choice. To borrow the words from Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we weren't in Kansas anymore. Have you ever heard the phrase "point of no return?" Well, once you get so far in life, either with decisions you've made, circumstances beyond your control or situations that for the moment dictate a steady hand at the wheel, you are at a "point of no return." It's like an airplane flying over the ocean. The plane has just enough fuel to get to the other side. If it has only flown a third of the way, there is enough fuel for the pilot to turn around and go back where the plane originated. However, once the airplane reaches just beyond that halfway mark, the pilot knows he is committed. There isn't enough fuel to return to the starting point. He has no choice but to fly to his destination. The airplane is at a "point of no return."

     Life is like that. For the most part, there are no "do overs." We can't relive our past or go back to where we started, we don't know for certain what is in our future, and often our present is more than enough to handle. The thing is, for us to handle our present and continue on our destination towards the future, we can't give up or surrender! Sometimes we want to. Lord knows I did on more than one occasion! Sometimes we feel like others have failed us or we have failed ourselves, but here's the thing. "Failure isn't falling down, it's refusing to get back up and try again." I've watched some of the Summer Olympics over the course of the last several days. The tenacity and drive of those athletes is nothing short of amazing. I can imagine how they must've felt the thousands of times they fell if they were running or doing gymnastics, or how many times they fell short if they were swimming or rowing. But there they were at the Olympics! None of them there were failures because they got back up and kept trying... again and again and again until they found themselves so successful they were representing their countries! These athletes all have learned a valuable lesson about life, about what matters and what doesn't and those lessons are what caused them to never give up or surrender.

     I have a feeling that no one reading this today has lived a perfectly charmed life - where everything went as planned, where there were no setbacks, surprises or detours. I doubt that any of you have been perfectly healthy or completely successful at everything you've put your hand to. Success is more of a journey than a destination. It is an attitude, a mindset and a behavior.  At the end of it all ironically, we all end up on equal ground when life is said and done.

     There was once a conversation between the father of a very wealthy family and his young son...

"The father took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, ‘How was the trip?’

 

’It was great, Dad.’

‘Did you see how poor people live,’ the father asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ said the son.

‘So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip,’ asked the father.

The son answered:
 

‘I saw that we have one dog and they had four.’

‘We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.’

’We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.’

‘Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.’

 ‘We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.’

‘We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.’

‘We buy our food, but they grow theirs.’

‘We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.’

The boy’s father was speechless. Then his son added,‘Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.’”

     There is a crucial key to life in this story. Never giving up and never surrendering has much more to do with what you do with what you have and how you feel about where you are, than what you actually have or where you are actually heading. It is about gratitude, acceptance, self-worth and true value. Stuff is just that - stuff. It does not define our true worth. Accomplishments are awesome and we all desire them, but they do not define who we are. If life has sent you on an unexpected "Galaxy Quest," due to health issues, loss of a job or relationship, financial issues or just a change of plans beyond your control, just remember what it takes to truly "never give up and never surrender!" You don't have to stay down if you fall down or are knocked down. You have much more to get up for than you realize!

Sixties Baby

When I started writing this post, I realized that my topic would expose me. No woman really loves telling her age, but here I am doing just that and I have to say, I think I'm doing okay for an "old lady!" Yes I am a "sixties baby" - the age of psychedelic flower prints, white go go boots, peace symbols, bell bottom pants, Afros, and a message of "love sweet love" that rang out in the love revolution. Our musical tastes ranged from the Beatles to John Denver, from rock-in-roll to soul, from country to jazz and everything in between.

Since I was born at the onset of the decade, I was still in that transition phase form the simplicity of the 50's to the revolution of the 60's. I was raised in the South and despite what you see in the movies, I was taught from an early age to respect everyone young and old, rich and poor, black and white. It's funny because I hear so much about social repression of certain races and classes of people back in the day, but honestly I didn't see any of that. I learned how to say "yes ma'am" and "yes sir" as soon as I could say full sentences. I was taught that everyone was my neighbor, and that true friends were "family." The neighborhood I grew up in was predominantly white but I didn't really think of that so much. Louise, the lady that helped care for me and my brother after Mama returned to work was like an older aunt to us. Oh her skin was darker than ours, but it wasn't something that seemed odd to me. She was like family.  It wasn't until the end of the 5th grade that I "learned" about social differences. 

The year was 1971. Segregation in most social arenas had faded away with the exception of schools. There were a few black students in my grammar school, but because we were assigned schools based on where we lived, the ratio was low since our neighborhoods did not have that many black families living there. It certainly wasn't due to economics, because I grew up in an average house, eating lots of beanie weenies and mac-n-cheese. It's just that the different races had settled into different parts of town through the years. My grammar school was a first through sixth grade, but at the end of my fifth year, the school board made an announcement that they were implementing integration of our schools. I would not be able to finish my last year of grammar school at my present school. Instead, they were busing us across town to an inner city middle school and busing many of the inner city students to schools in my area. I only lived a few miles from my grammar school, so the thought of having to get up before daylight to hop on a bus and ride many miles across town was the last thing this little girl wanted. Even back then I was not a morning person!  

But there we went - all of us from each side of town pulled away from what was familiar to us in a social experiment exercise mandated by the government and Department of Education. In full disclosure, I was raised as a "church girl" so was sheltered from many things that went on in society - both that of the white and black community. Even though it was the sixties, I had not been exposed to the many things that the "hippie revolution" offered - drugs, drinking and "free love." To say that my first couple of months at the new school was traumatic for me  is an understatement. It was a culture shock of epic proportions. I met older white boys who had failed school a few times. They had beards and long hair, and stayed high on pot. They were known for pinching girls on the booty - girls who wore mini skirts, low cut blouses and go go boots, and who flirted shamelessly. I saw black boys who were also older due to failing school. They liked me more than I wanted them to and were very forward towards me teasing me in every way possible to get my attention. I saw long hair, Afros, tattoos, cigarettes, beer cans, peace symbols and crosses hanging down bare chests and pierced ears. I saw girls and boys making out in dark corners and sneaking puffs of a joint when they could. I had my purse stolen, my hair pulled, my clothes mocked and my naivety laughed at. It was a world this little church girl had never had a slight glimpse of and this was just middle school!

I can't lie. For the first year or so, the clash of social cultures was difficult for us all - black and white. We were all raised in our own little cocoons, with our rituals, habits, traditions, manner of speaking and activities that were familiar only to those in our communities. But then something begin to happen. As we studied together, sat side by side in desks together, ate lunch in the cafeteria together, played volleyball or did relay races together, dressed out in gym together, cheered at basketball games together, and sat on tattered bus seats together, we found out that we had more similarities than differences; and in the ways we were different, we were not longer intimidated but intrigued. After three years, the "experiment" was proven to be a success and we graduated to the world of high school. By then, it was another transition of epic proportions being underclassmen - babies, passing the upperclassmen - young "adults" in the hall. I was able to attend the high school near my house and actually able to walk or drive to the school. By then we were a tight knit group - this integrated "family." The school board and government had their balanced "ratio" and we had our forever friends and classmates. No, everything wasn't perfect, and sometimes our cultures clashed. Not because one was better than the other, but just because we were accustomed to different lifestyles, routines etc. but we grew and matured and expanded our wings. My senior year of high school, I was the National Honor Society secretary. My best friend, also an honor student. was Asian. Our  class president was a brilliant and funny young black man with a 4.0 average.

Reflecting on this time of my life and then observing the clashes in our society between races and cultures today, I find it hard to even listen to the rhetoric spewed by mainstream media and by political leaders. This "we've come a long way but have a ways to go because people still aren't being treated fairly" is a cop out. Rather than coming a long way, we've gone backwards in the last decade! The days I experienced 40 years ago were filled with much more acceptance, respect, understanding and cooperation then what is happening now. Back then we didn't blame each other for what our ancestors had done a hundred years before we were born. We didn't feel like we were victims because we were forced to think of someone besides ourselves when we first came together and we didn't expect our teachers, community leaders or government officials to fight our battles, pamper us or give in to our selfish whims. Rather, we tackled the social changes head on and courageously. We celebrated the many ways we were alike rather than argue about the many ways we were different. Our parents taught us the one key element to success in society and in life - respect. If human beings do not have respect for others and respect for themselves, then society falls apart. This sense of entitlement, of pampering and protecting, of selfishness and superiority, of disregard and divisiveness is all due to that one word - respect. Rather then becoming a progressive society like we "say" we are, we have become a primitive one behaving less than civilized, to say the least. 

I am proud to be a "sixties baby" and for the lessons learned so long ago. My prayers are that somehow these lessons that we learned can be taught to our children and grandchildren so that we can find our way back to an age of peace and the "love revolution."