The theme for this year’s PTSA Reflections competition is “The World Would Be A Better Place If…,” and I have assigned my students to write an original work for a ReadAround in class tomorrow. As I try to do with all assignments, I did the writing along with them. Below is my response to the prompt.
If “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, oh what a Christmas it’d be.
My brother and I always said that when we were growing up, and it’s been running through my mind since we began the Reflections writing. I think about the truth behind that little chant, and I have to shake my head that we had no idea what truth we were actually speaking in our naïve youth. Quite honestly, at the time we liked being able to say the word “buts” without getting in trouble, and we also liked to taunt one another with the implied meaning that, “We don’t always get what we want.”
“The world would be a better place if…” If.: skinny “I” and a meek “F.” So much riding on those two tiny letters. Their appearance is frail, but their power immense.
The truth is, we can’t count on ifs. Ifs are only possibilities, not certainties. They are prognostications of the future. And I believe there is only One Who holds the future.
So, the world would be a better place if we began recognizing that it’s already a better place because.
Because transfers the power we give to the future to a hope we can hold today. Because allows us to recognize what is already right and empowers us to celebrate the times when good has already overtaken evil. Because is the engine that motors gratitude instead of greed. Because embodies the idea that we can take ownership and control of our circumstances, instead of relinquishing that control to the cosmic plotline strewn before us.
When we focus on what we have instead of what might be, we begin to deal in reality. That doesn’t mean to not dream and imagine a world void of hate, despair, death, destruction, bigotry, idolatry, vengeance, violence or apathy. It means that we value how far we’ve come so that we can use our progress for encouragement for the long and tough road ahead instead of chastising ourselves for how far we have yet to go.
Yes, the world could be a better place. It should be a better place. And the world would be a better place IF we begin to focus on the because instead of the if.
(cross-posted at http://kelleycreekview.edublogs.org/)
Along for the Write 