Love Makes The World Go Round....

I saw one of the ecards yesterday on Facebook that said something like, try going a whole day with no complaining, and see what positivity it brings to your life.  Today is my day.  Today I will go through the day without one complaint. 

A positive attitude is certainly the best friend of us all, but in our society how hard is it to keep?  I mean, we get irritated at service people when they do not do a great job, we get irritated with our loved ones when they do not perform to our expectations, we get irritated at traffic that is standing still on a highway.  Our society is filled with negativity at varying levels throughout.  There are people that walk around with a permanent scowl on their faces, and then there are those that seem fine until one day they erupt with anger and attack someone out of no where.

When did our society become so full of angst, and more importantly how do we tame the beast?!?  I think we all need a good solid round of Kumbayah and a hug fest or something.  Looking at cultures worldwide I think it is true that Americans tend to be the least affectionate, and the among the most negative.  I think as a whole we are somewhat of an unhappy people.  How else is the self-help field so successful in this country.  People know they are troubled and want to do something about it but need guidance and help to find true inner peace and happiness.

What would it take for you to be happy and content every day?  What would it take for your days to be complaint free?  What would you need in order to walk around smiling every day, just because you are happy to be on this planet and not lost in the minutia of day to day society?  Why not start with just one day, one day of actively keeping a positive attitude?  Try it with me now people, breathe in, exhale, and start anew. 

**Edited to Add....

I have complained a couple times today, I am confessing here and now.  I complained about a friend earlier to my mother, and I complained to my husband this morning when I saw something on television that really ticked me off about a baby being wrongfully taken from his parents. 

This whole no complaining thing is even harder than I thought.  How can we avoid complaining and express discontent about things in our society??  I mean, I was also working through the problem with the friend with my mom so it was not like I was merely emotionally dumping on my mom.  It was like therapy...lol...anyone that knows my mom knows why that is insanely funny.  

So those are my confessions for today.  I am going to keep on working on my positivity, today, one day at a time. 

Adam Lanza

Yes, that is his name.  Adam Lanza.  This is the person that found the ability in his twisted, screwed up world to walk into an elementary school and murder innocent children and teachers.  That is his name, Adam Lanza.  Why he committed the crime that he did is still unknown, but I think the main point here is that he was deeply troubled.  In the article I linked to his name it states that he was known for showing no emotion, an outsider, a loner, and strange.  At least one person who went to school with him says that it was not a surprise that he did this. 

THAT is the problem with our country.  We have kids walking around through their lives, with something wrong inside.  They are saying that they could see that something was wrong with this person.  Why, why was he just walking around unstable, unemotional, waiting for the wrong thing to set him off?  I am not saying that any person who is anti-social should be locked up, but this kid had a history of instability.

I feel like this kid's village failed him.  I do.  I know many people are just condemning his heinous actions, and I am not trying to minimize the aftermath.  I just think that instead of solely focusing on gun control and whether or not to increase it, decrease it, or just plain enforce what we have, we need to look at our society's handling of mental illness.

We have to make something positive come out of this horror.  Our society has fallen off a much worse cliff than anything fiscal, we have fallen off a moral cliff.  We have lost control of what we allow our children to be expose to.  We have pushed aside those that need help, brushing it under the rug as they are just different.  Different is okay, but mentally unstable needs help!

We have to become accountable as a society.  We have to stand up for our morals and values, and not just talk about, we have to act on it!  We have to return to the days where neighborhoods were safe for kids to play in after school.  We have to return to the time when it was okay to have a disagreement with someone and not worry about them killing you in the street.  We have to return to a time where we respected human life, and cherished all of our kids. 

I implore parents everywhere to stand up and start working together.  We do not have to agree on every parenting aspect, it is okay if we do things differently than each other.  But we have to work together to raise our children in a healthy, thriving environment.  We have to take back our society, and say enough is enough.  Only we can do this, we on the front lines of our home towns.  We are the soldiers in this war.  We fight it with love, compassion, understanding, and most of all COMMUNICATION!!!

I challenge you, you reading this right now, to use your voice right now and state your role.  How are you going to change the world you live in today?  What is your first step in action?  How will you make your world a better place for your children, or your nieces/nephews, your cousins, your neighbors children, any and every child growing up in our society today? 

I just cannot wrap my head around this

Children are innocent beings, pure in heart and mind. It is the adults in the world that jade children and rob them of their innocence. It is the adults that take away their safe havens, whatever that may be.

Children are everything adults should aim to be, positive, energetic, inquisitive, playful, full of unconditional love.

What could anyone think harming innocent babies would do, would accomplish? We are left to try and make sense from nonsense....logic from irrational thoughts and actions. We are left with children who today lost their innocence and a great a deal of their youth, and in too many cases their much too shortened lives.
God rest their souls, and keep them safe because our society did not.

Formula Freebies...

There is a push in today's mother/baby units to remove the free sample formula.  In New York, Mayor Bloomberg is exercising his efforts to increase breastfeeding by telling formula companies that they may no longer provide free samples of formula to the new mothers.  Many people are up in arms over this.  People seem to think that he is trying to take away a mother's right to choose whether or not she breastfeeds her child.  In reality, he is trying to level the playing field. 

These companies are simply exercising a marketing campaign.  They are selling their product to new moms by giving it away first.  These same companies do not provide free samples for moms who choose to breastfeed exclusively.  I did not leave the hospital with breast milk storage bags given to me free.  No, I left with a can of formula, which I did not use.  I have been nursing my 15 month old since the day she was born, and have no use for formula.  If I did need it, I would be okay with the idea of having to buy it myself. 

No one is taking away the choice to breastfeed or bottle feed.  What is being taken away is the advertising to new moms who may be inclined to give up on breastfeeding when it gets tough, and sometimes it gets tough, because they have this free can of formula sitting there.  It is meant to encourage moms to give breastfeeding a chance.  This country is one of the only ones where breastfeeding is almost deemed as a bad thing by a large group of people.  They become vehement at the site of a woman nursing her baby.  Only in America.

We claim to stand for the free and the brave, but turn our backs on the most basic of sustainance giving practices, breastfeeding.  Our society is filled with over weight, under exercised, disease riddled people and we cannot figure out why.  Hello, wake up!!!  It is what we put into our bodies, starting from DAY 1!!!!

So I say, ditch the FREE formula at the hospitals!!!  It is still your choice whether or not to breastfeed or formula feed.  No one is taking that away from anyone.  You just have to pay for it, which you do anyway once you run out of that first can.