Posted on by JJones

Off the Wall: That Little Voice

 

 

My beautiful daughter.
My beautiful daughter.

http://www.wspa.com/story/27336201/woman-killed-in-spartanburg-apartment-shooting

So we watch the news or read an article on Google, maybe overhear someone talking about an incident. I for one forbid my children to go to Waffle House for ages because of two shootings that happened at two different Waffle Houses. But sadly many of the horrors that go on around us we discreetly  ignore, or in my case blame it on waffles.

But last night my 20 year old daughter called me upset after witnessing a murder right outside her doorstep. My first instinct was to move her back home away from her apartment, thinking to myself that apartment complex must be dangerous. But in fact it wasn’t the apartment complex rather  two people that made their own choices. Choices that ended up with a young woman murdered, and another on the way to jail, but in the end they controlled their own reactions. And thank goodness my daughter was smart enough to get inside with her puppy Sam.

When I went to see if there was a report about it online, I found that there were lots of shootings, and people suffering in my area, not just in some far away desert land. I realized right then that the only thing I can do is teach my children to be aware of their surroundings and hope they have the wisdom to know danger when it is near. This doesn’t mean I still don’t wish I could just move her back home. I hate that she will always know the sound of a gun shot, and the flash of light that ended someone’s life. But so many children and adults know that sound, and carry on. Could it help them see how valuable life really is and how quickly the wrong choice can end it?

I just really hope it doesn’t teach her to be scared and anxious about living. And as a parent, even though this happened at my daughter’s doorstep. I need to remember it is important she becomes an adult that is not controlled by fear but an adult that lives with wisdom and understanding life, not death. She needs to listen to the little voice in her head that seems to quietly nudge us in the right direction, help when she can, get out of harms way, and live with strength and grace.

Posted on by JJones

Off the Wall: Imagination

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

John Keats

The Old Stone Bridge

 

Yes, it has been almost a full year since my last post, so I thought I’d start back with one of my favorite topics, imagination.  I once had an argument with a very intelligent but less than inventive woman, who said that knowledge is far more important than creativity. I had to point out that knowledge can be taught but the ability to create and be imaginative was something you don’t learn, it is just a part of you. But once I had spoken up, I stopped and listened to her point of view. I still couldn’t agree that knowledge is more important than imagination. But I could see that both are equally important.

You see knowledge can be merely a list of facts, or dates, your childhood phone number, or the scientific name of your favorite flower, mine is the Bellis perennis. Now I only know the scientific name for daisy because I looked it up. But knowledge can be far more than a database of  trivia answers. When you connect imagination to knowledge you began to see patterns  and better understand the logic, or lack of logic to the truths we believe to be fact. So this is my warm up blog, reminding me to connect knowledge to imagination, so that in these little writing moments I can find more truth.