Demands On Time

With school, homework, chores and other demands, I have no free time. It’s making me feel restricted.
   While there is no denying the pressures of one’s schedule at times, I believe that to regard the things you mentioned as merely unpleasant demands on your time is an incorrect perspective. If you think about it, it’s only because you enjoy great freedom that you have an opportunity to attend school and to study.
   Do you look at going to school as a right or as something you’re forced to do? As a liberating activity or something that stifles you from doing what you want? It all depends on your personal philosophy, on your wisdom. If you are passive, you’ll feel trapped and unhappy in even the freest of environments. But if you take an active approach and challenge your circumstances, you will be free no matter how confining your situation may actually be.
   The stronger you are, the freer you will be. Someone without a lot of stamina may have great difficulties climbing even a small hill. Someone sick might not manage it at all. But a strong, healthy person can climb even a mountain easily, with zest and enjoyment. To climb the mountains of your life goals, it’s important to develop your strength. Build a strong enough self so that you can be active in school and in your outside activities. If you have strength and capability, you will have freedom.
   The same is true of sports or music. To pay your chosen sport or instrument with complete mastery and ease, you have to gain an adequate level of proficiency, you have to be prepared to make some sacrifices so you can practice to the degree necessary.
   Children who suffer from serious illnesses or who live in war-torn countries often can’t go to school even though they may want to. Many children in more fortunate circumstances, who do have the opportunity to attend school, never fully appreciate how free they really are. Having the opportunity to go to school—is a sign of the most incredible freedom. And it’s a mistake not to realize it.
   I’m reminded of a story I recently heard about a young man who had multiple myeloma, a disabling and painful form of bone cancer. In the last two years of his life, with his entire body encased in a cast because of multiple bone fractures, he visited local high schools in his wheelchair to talk about the terrible effects of drug abuse. He would say to the students:” you want to destroy your body with nicotine or alcohol or heroin? You want to smash it up in a car wreck? You’re depressed and want to throw yourself off a bridge? Then give me your body! Let me have it! I want it! I’ll take it! I want to live! During the war in the former Yugoslavia, according to one account, children talked about their dreams. One said,” I had many dreams, but the war is robbing me of all of them.” And another said, “Our dream is to live an ordinary life with our friends, to be able to go to school.”continue……