Soap Box

I used to be a complainer and an excuse maker.

I complained about the weather, about too much homework, getting up early in the morning, about not making the softball team, how heavy the things I was having to lift were, how hot it was at football practice, and on and on and on.

And I made excuses, everything was somebody else's fault, the alarm clock didn't go off, the teacher didn't like me, I thought he was supposed to do it, anything to deflect the fault, or actually the responsibility, to put the blame for my shortcomings on somebody else's shoulders.

Fortunately, pretty early in my life I learned that the culprit in 99.9 percent of my problems looked back at me from the mirror when I brushed my teeth in the morning.

I found out that if you can't accept the blame for your faults, you're not trustworthy to accept responsibility and if you can't accept responsibility, you'll spend the rest of your life wallowing around in self-pity, jealous of those who have achieved success and go on to make something out of their lives, trying to figure out why they made it and you didn't.

There is a difference in pointing out difficulties and problems and inventing difficulties and problems of your own and, when you do, you basically declare yourself inferior to one who has the moxie to take the bit in their teeth and run with it, dealing with problems on their own without even telling anybody else about it.

There is never enough of that kind of people, the responsibility takers, the ones who stand up and say "here I am, let me do it" and take the bull by the horns and proceed to wrestle him to the ground, get up and dust off and head out to look for another bull.

These are the kinds of employees that businesses are always on the lookout for, the ones who are able to act autonomously, make basic decisions, individuals with the guts to accept the blame as well as the glory, who learn from their mistakes but are not disheartened by them and never afraid to get up, brush off and set out again.

It's not necessarily always the biggest kid on the playground that the bullies leave alone, but the ones that no matter how bad they're getting beaten they keep right on coming, fighting back with everything they've got, the kind that you can't turn your back on when you knock them down because they're going to get up off the ground and punch you again.

And it's not I.Q., but attitude that takes the biggest prize. It�s not always academic degrees but horse sense, not sophistication but sweat and tenacity and the willingness to give it a try and take the responsibility for the outcome.

The Children of Israel that Moses had taken out of Egypt after being in slavery to Pharaoh for over four hundred years complained constantly. They complained about the food, they complained about the water, they even complained that Moses had brought them out into the desert to die.

And even when they were camped across from the promised land they took one look at the people who inhabited the country and said. "Oh, they're too big and too powerful, we're like grass hoppers compared to them," and they finally even wore out Almighty God.

Because of their attitude, God said that nobody except Joshua and Caleb, two men of valor who did not the fear the "giants" who inhabited the land they wanted to conquer, would ever enter the land.

And they wandered in the desert for forty years until all of the generation that originally left Egypt was dead.

They complained their way and refused their way out of ever setting foot into the homeland God had promised, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land so rich that it took two men to carry a single cluster of grapes on a pole suspended between them, the land that would be the home of the Jews forever.

There is a price to be paid for complaining and refusing to take responsibility.

Certainly, I'm not insinuating that you'll have to wander in a desert for forty years, but it can sure change to quality of your life.

Complaining is just your way of telling everybody you want them to be as miserable as you are and shirking responsibility is a sign of immaturity.

Think about it.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU POST

Feel free to comment on Charlie's soapboxes, but please refrain from profanity and anonymous posts are not allowed, we need a name and you MUST provide a valid email address. If you provide an email address, but leave the name as "Anonymous" we will pick a name for you based on your email address. No one other than website administrators will see your email address, not other posters. If you post without a valid email address, your comment (whether positive or negative) will be deleted. � TeamCDB