If I Knew Then What I Know Now: A Letter to Hareena’s Past Self

Dear, Me (5 years younger)

There are SO many things I could tell you about your future and how things turn out, but everything happens as it should. When things do not go as planned it is critical to learn how to pick yourself back up and learn to go with the flow. No matter what I tell you, from the future, it will not change the events of your life that will lead you to where I am today. You will have smoother transitions in life if you realize the changes that need to be made sooner.

Family, they will always be there, but they are not the ones living your life. Your family will support you in whatever it is that you want to do and your actions will affect them. However, your happiness is most important. You have to live with yourself and if you are not happy about what you have decided, then it is YOU that has to face yourself in the mirror everyday. So, listen to everyone, take their advice, but in the end do what you want to do. Listen to what your heart and mind are saying to you, it will make the difference and you will be more at peace with yourself.

Do not be afraid of change. There will be a point where you will have to leave everything behind; your childhood, your friends, your neighborhood. You will have to learn how to adjust to the change and you will have to learn how to figure things out for yourself. Learn how to break away from the comfort of your normal everyday life, learn to welcome the change and look at it as a new beginning, a new opportunity to learn.  

Figure out what you want to do and DO IT! The sky's the limit and do not let ANYONE tell you, “you can’t.” If you waste your time listening to people who tell you this, you will begin to believe it. You will be stuck with nowhere to go and stray away from your purpose. Essentially, you will be wasting your valuable time. The feeling of being lost will overcome you causing you to lose purpose. The only way you will figure out what you want to do is to try new things! Do not stop yourself from trying new things, that next thing you try, just may be what you were meant to do. Do not settle for less than what you deserve.

A part of living is dying. People will come and go, but it's especially hard to lose someone that is close to you. It is even harder to lose someone that you NEVER got a chance to know. Never miss out on the opportunity to speak to anyone, no matter how close or distant the relationship is. You never know when your conversation will be the last one.

This next piece of advice that I am about to share with you may sound a bit odd, given our history, but try to care less. There will be people that come into your life that you will care too much about, and it will seem as though they do not even care whether or not you are even breathing regularly. Be kind to everyone, and do not show any one any negative feelings.There will be those few people that will be there for you when you need them and those are the people you need to care for. Put the effort in showing them that you care. A Mark Twain quote comes to mind, “Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” So, if you care less about the people that do not blink an eye for you, you will have more time to focus on yourself and the people who deserve your attention, you will endure less suffering.

Sincerly,

Hareena (from the future)

H O P E

A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. If you have air in your lungs and blood in your veins you have hope. Hope is what drives the human mind to move forward in life. When faced with a rather grim situation, hope is that agent that brings positivity to it, making us believe that things HAVE to get better. Hope is ALL we have, without it we have no reason… we have nothing. Humans have a limited time on this planet and we have to make the best of what we have and look to the positives in our lives. We do not know what tomorrow holds, but we hope that whatever is in store for us will be favorable. Hope is making the best of what you have, so that you can have a better outcome for tomorrow. When life gives you lemons, you make a lemon drop and plant the seeds so you can get more lemons in the future. ;)  ... It takes YEARS for a lemon tree to begin to produce lemons ...  hope is the same way. You should never give up on the tree because you do not know when that tree will bless you with the fruits of your labor (hard work)... When you have hope you should never lose it because once it pays off it will be all the more fulfilling.

Hope can be difficult to hold on to when all things seem lost. When people go through depression or a traumatic experience, it may seem that there is no way you can recover from it. However, somewhere in the back of one’s mind we have to believe that things will change for the better. BELIEVING that you will overcome the obstacle is half the battle. Once you have the mindset that things will get better, they HAVE to. If you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere else to go but up. Having hope will allow you to see beyond your current predicament into the future. One’s mind set can be the difference between one’s failure and one’s success, when you think you cannot do something chances are you will not reach that goal. When you reach this crossroads say to yourself, “Try, try again, and NEVER say ‘I can’t.”  Simply saying these words to yourself will affect your mentality toward the situation. It will make all the difference in your outcome and stops you from throwing in the towel.

Who remembers all of the controversy surrounding the Winter Solstice of 2012? The end to the Maya Calendar, or in other words the end of the WORLD? How many of us stopped our lives because we were betting on the fact that we were going to die? The Maya Calendar ended and some INTELLIGENT people took this as the world was going to end … but the majority of us, “normal” people still went about our lives and prepared for our futures. … we had hope. Granted not everyone believed that the world was going to end, but if everyone had, things would have been very different. Had we lost that hope, everyone's lives would have been in chaos, no one would have prepared for the day after. What we hope for tomorrow determines what our actions will be today. During this event I was finishing up my LAST semester at university, had I believed the world was going to end, I would not have bothered to get my education. However I had hope that the world was not going to end, as a result I secured my future by earning my degree.

We do not know what our future holds, and when we begin to think about our future we make a choice about how to pursue that life path. We think about what career will make us feel fulfilled. Once we begin to pursue that career path we hope that it works out for us. The reason we form ideas and construct dreams is because we have hope. We hope that they will one day come true, and that the future will be better than the present moment. There are no simple roads to success and when we hit a brick wall we look to the power of HOPE to see us through that rough patch. Without having hope, we would give up LONG before reaching or even realizing our potential. Some say babies are a blank slates and we learn basic things in life from walking to learning, and how to communicate, but if we gave up every time we fell no one would know how to walk. Throughout our life we WILL fall down, and having hope is what helps us get back up. If you fall 6 times you HAVE to get up 7 times, those 6 falls do not matter, it is the seventh rise that matters the most! Don’t nobody wanna stay down!   

Even when we hope with every fiber of our being, there will be times where all of our hope will be for nothing, and disappointment settles in where that hope once stood. That disappointment is not the “end,” but it is an opportunity to LEARN. We are not perfect human beings, there are many things that are in our control and if we have made the wrong decisions it is up to us to learn from our actions. Hope keeps us motivated, and it give us a reason for living. Our very existence is not based on a promise, but it is based on having hope for tomorrow and living for the future.

~Dream. HOPE. Future.

Call of Duty: Calling All Parents!!!

Your children are a reflection of who you are. Whatever you teach them (or don’t teach them) is a direct result of what YOU think is important. A lot of folks blame video games for causing violence in our youth. Video games are not bad at all, however the neglect of teaching your kids what is ok and what is not, is unacceptable. For kids, video games are just a hobby, it should not be any more than that … unless they turn it into a career in the future. Video games do not cause violence. Parents need to stop blaming outside sources for the misguidance of their children which results in poor behavior. Our children are always learning, it starts the moment the child is born. Their first teachers are their parent, so everything the parent does is picked up on. Their minds are like a sponge, they will absorb EVERYTHING they see and hear. Video games are NOT to blame, however the lack of parental guidance IS to blame.

How young is too young? Most younger kids haven’t developed the cognitive ability to differentiate why some things are wrong or right. All they know is what you tell them. As they develop they begin to question why things are the way they are and that’s when they’ll fully understand the “why.” If they are exposed to violent video games at a young age, before they have the capacity to understand what is going on they will be desensitized to the content in the video game. They will be more likely to overlook the difference between the virtual world of videogames and reality. Too much gaming will make them think the game is their reality. If the game contains violence, for instance killing someone (COD), will they understand that it is not ok to kill in real life? Each video game has a rating, and those ratings are there to help parents make an informed decision. Children should not even have access to these kinds of games. If they do then somewhere along the line the parents failed at ensuring that these games do not reach the hands of their child. Parents have to be the filter in the home and establish what is allowed and what is punishable by Parent Law.

If kids are spending too much time playing video games, not only are they vulnerable to becoming numb to the violence but they are spending precious time on the idiot box that they could be spending outside. They could play a friendly game of basketball, learn to swim, go for a walk, play with the household pet, or even go camping where they can grow mentally, physically and work on their team building skills and develop social skills. If you don’t want your children to spend so much time on games then set time limits. Video games are not the only form of entertainment for your child, make sure to have books in the home!!! Surround your children with the things that will promote healthy development like educational books and magazines, or take them to museums and exploratoriums. Most importantly always express your love for them. They need constant family support to be able to succeed in life and live happily.  

Parents need to be the primary educator in their children’s life. The earlier YOU start to teach your kids what is acceptable and expected of them the better. Of course this won’t rule out the rebellious stage that most will eventually reach in their teens. The point is that if you teach them at a young age that violence is not good and it is never the answer, they will know when they see violence to decode it as something that is wrong. If the child receives no guidance whatsoever on violence in a video game, whatever they see in that game is going to register as the norm. It is not a valid statement to say that video games teach children to be violent, that will happen only if you failed to instill principles which indicate that violence is wrong. The parents need to teach their kids to distinguish the virtual game platforms from reality. Teach them what’s right and take responsibility for the life you have created. Your little human will thank you for it.

“The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.”

Bill Cosby

-Edith