Vocation, or something like it.

So today I went to Carrabba's with Father Adam. We sat and discussed a great many things, but along the way, Father kept coming back to the idea that I might enjoy myself as a teacher, and agreed with me on my plans to become a counselor. I told him that I love both of those things: to make people comfortable in their own skins (the counselor) and to show people something that makes them step back and say "Wait a minute!" and then causes them to be passionate, thoughtful, and considerate about whatever endeavor they were undertaking (the teacher).

My Master Yoshi's first rule was "Posess the Right Thinking."

I figure that the best way to get people to learn and to make them more at ease with who they are is to change the way they think. Make them consider possibilities with potential, rather than possibilities that despair. They have to know themselves well, so that they can recognize what they can and cannot do, and what might be possible someday and what will never be possible. That way they can place their efforts into the things that they will enjoy or things that they are compelled to do to see if those things can become something worth doing or having.

I suppose nothing that I'm saying is original, but I have come to these conclusions on my own. I reckon they are worth something because they have at least helped me.

Some say that the path from inner turmoil begins with an open ear. My ear is open if you care to use it.

Secondly, people have to learn to be honest about a great deal of things--more with themselves than with other people. I find it funny how often the one person in the world someone might want to fool or decieve is himself. We want to believe that we are better than we are. We want to think that we are worth something to everyone and are worth everything to someone. Now, we do in fact have a great deal of worth to a great many people. We just have to find out where that worth lies. Some people want to think that they are worth something to another person in a way that they are not worthwhile in one particular way or another. One example comes to mind as that boy or girl who is in love with another person, and thinks that he or she is the absolute only one for that other person, when that might not be the case.

It helps in these matters to have a person to listen and understand because when we are honest with ourselves in the presence of another, there's no way that we can say to ourselves, "I didn't really say that," or "I didn't really mean it that way." Perhaps that's why confession in the Catholic church is so important. We're not allowed to say, "I do X," and then turn around and say, "Doing X is not so terribly bad."

The more we come to understand these things, the more we come to understand ourselves. And of course, the more we come to understand ourselves means that we are able to love ourselves fully and be what we were made to be. We can be, as Captain Malcolm Reynolds says, "a person, good and whole."

Perhaps I should investigate this teaching/counseling thing a bit more seriously. Maybe it will help me become whole.