The Pnebleu Blog

“Success will come with patience.” That was the last advice I got in a fortune cookie at T. Jin’s.  So far, I have lived by that motto.  I work hard everyday, at work, school, or play.  Always giving my best effort, I usually succeed, but when I don’t, I just keep going.  You can look at the token in that light, or you can look at it in a different light.

“Success will come with patience.” You have to wait for success to come.  You’re unsuccessful now, but maybe in the future, if you wait patiently, success will come.  Obviously, I try to look at it in the first more optimistic frame.

What is success?  Is it becoming the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, making millions of dollars, and marrying the perfect trophy wife?  I don’t think so.  I think of success as doing my best everyday, enjoying my work, and leading a life in service to God.

Life has been rolling along at lightning speed for the past couple of months, and I’m not the only one to notice it. I’ve had to find an new apartment to live in for the Summer, Fall, and Spring coming up, which actually didn’t take that long. I only have about 5 weeks left of school this semester. Chores that I need to do are starting to stack up as I’m getting behind. My car, for instance, will need some maintenance done on it in the next couple of months, yet I’ve been waiting because I didn’t and still don’t have the money to do it. I paid off all of my taxes early, so that I don’t have to worry about now. But, my wallet is decreased because of it. The price of gas, therefore the price of everything else, has increased quite a bit recently. It’s now about $3.15/gallon, whereas last year at about this time I paid $2.42/gallon. If the price of energy continues to rise exponentially, I am going to have some trouble along with the world economy.

The 2008 election is coming up real fast and I don’t like any of the choices. It will be interesting, however, who wins the Democratic nomination. If they were smart, Obama and Hillary would ask the other to be the Vice President when they become the nominee. I’ll probably be voting for McCain, but there are so many things about him I really dislike.

Braden and Mikayla, my younger siblings, entered photos and desserts into the county fair at home. Braden won 2nd Place for his photo and Mikayla was the Reserve Grand Champion. Braden also got 1st Place for his Banana Nut Muffins and Mikayla got 1st Place for a Pound Cake. Each of the food items made the sale, so Monday they will be auctioned for and the kids will get the proceeding money. I’m really proud of them. They are so much fun to be with. Since I moved to College Station, I haven’t been able to spend much time with them as I’d like. I really miss seeing them everyday before and after school. My family means so much to me.

I will add some pictures of “the kids” and their ribbons as soon as I can.

Hindsight is 20/20, yet it gets blurry real fast. We don’t look at the mistakes from the past, very often, before we make them again in the present. Sometimes we look back at the past and wonder why we felt the way we did. You forget your own perception from the past. This isn’t confined to people as individuals, it can be expanded to include countries and even the human race in general. Life happens in cycles. We may develop new technologies and have different details, but people do the same things over and over. There are wars for land and resources. There are cycles of civic and social growth, which are followed by decadence, the Roman Empire for example. People are born, grow up and learn, find love, procreate, grow old, and finally die. Then, the next generation does the same thing over again. There is nothing more cyclical. If we want to break the cycle in some places and improve our existence, it requires looking a the past, learning from other’s mistakes and doing things differently in the future. But, you still have to teach the next generation or they will “forget” and the cycle begins again.

Breaking from the circle of life, to use a cliché, is not always a positive thing. The break from traditional nuclear families during the last half of the 20th century has had some negative consequences on the children of non-traditional families. The rise in youth violence, youth depression and other mental illness, and lowering education scores may have something to do with the new family structures that are increasingly in use. Just because this is the most advanced time in human history and we are able to do things people a few decades ago couldn’t even imagine if they wanted to, doesn’t mean we know everything and should try to change the nature cycle. We may just inadvertently wreck havoc on basic human existence. We should be careful when we change tradition, look at all of the consequences. If you look to the past for the future, you may just find it; we’re doing the same things people did before us.