The things we learn in early childhood stick with us forever. Whether good or bad, early experiences form our views of life. My mother's recipes still set the standard for the kinds of things she cooked. The best tuna sandwiches are those closest to the way she prepared them. The best people are the kind of people she admired. The model of behavior is the model she admired. I don't have the science to know why these things are true; I only know that they are. Similarly, feelings we have when we are young stay with us. If we're taught to be fearful, insecure or withdrawn, we will tend to be the same as adults. If we're taught to be outgoing, confident or fearless, those feelings will tend to stay with us.  It could be that we are more receptive when young. Our brains aren't yet full of accumulated thoughts and feelings, we haven't yet put up protective walls around ourselves, we look only forward.

                                             I guess it's no surprise, then, that every year at this time I begin to think about earlier summers, summers when I was younger and the summer meant vacation from school for three months. In those days, summer was a time to rest from what I thought were the ordeals of school, to see friends and to look for new experiences. The summer was a time for fun. Even though there are no more three months vacations, even though I now see that school was not arduous, and even though I am unlikely to find any new experiences, I still feel that summer means that things will be easier and freer. Even though at my age the only good thing about summer may be a period of warmer weather, I still unconsciously think that things will be better in the summertime.

                                            Every day when I read the newspaper or watch the news on tv I hear about unfortunate people who had bad experiences when very young. These unfortunates often advance their bad early experiences as excuses for bad behavior. My belief in the importance of early experiences makes me somewhat sympathetic to their plight. But my sympathy is tempered by my belief that we can still overcome our early experiences. We are still responsible for our lives, we still owe the people around us our best efforts to lead useful lives.

                                            The key is hope. It's not only summer that brings me hope, I am generally a hopeful person. I always believe that things will turn out for the best. Being hopeful doesn't mean sitting passively and waiting for good things. We still must set goals and make an effort to achieve them. But if we aren't hopeful, if we aren't positive about our goals, we'll have a hard time achieving them. As long as we still hope for something, even something as amorphous as "better", we're still alive, we still have a chance. When we lose hope, we're through. If we can't imagine that things are going to get better, that it is possible for things to get better, we're no longer alive.

                                             Let's not lose hope, no matter how bad things seem at a given time. Let's be optimistic and keep trying. Even if we don't succeed, we'll feel better along the way.

6-6-05

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