YOU'RE OK KID

You're ok kid. Don't worry. You're going through what every living human being has gone through since the dawn of mankind-- (1) You're searching for a place to belong. (2) You're searching for your identity, and (3) You're searching for the meaning of life. If you have someone who loves you and guides you on this, often weary, often joyful, journey of life, count yourself lucky. If you don't, wear a hard hat, knee pads, and a cup, at all times. Especially a cup.

Most of your sorrows and grief, in life, will be self-imposed. You will make errors of judgment, unwise decisions, and careless, irretrievable, regrettable remarks.

If you're a guy, you will chase the wrong girl: the one who's untamed, unrepentant, and under your best friend, when your back is turned. If you're a girl, you will choose the wrong guy: the women's man, the lothario, the one with wolfish propensities--- in short---the heartbreaker.

After your heart has been shattered a couple of times; and after you've matured, somewhat, you will begin to appreciate the virtues of honesty, integrity, and fidelity. Good looks in a person of the opposite sex will always be important and desirable, in the choice of whom you choose to have a serious relationship. However, as you age -- if you are smart -- exterior attributes will hold less value than interior traits of sensibility, trustworthiness, and integrity.

Important!!! Be yourself. Don't emulate celebrities in any field of endeavor. Why? Because celebrities are often narcissistic, selfish, and undisciplined in matters of virtue and ethics. O.J. Simpson, Madonna, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton should spring to mind about now.

If you're a guy, don't try to be the sexy, silent, brooding character that Clint Eastwood often plays in the movies. That's great for the movies. If you behave that way with a girlfriend, you'll bore her to death, and she'll start looking for a guy with a pulse.

Girls. Develop strength of character, self-esteem and confidence. Without those important traits you will be inclined to give your body in return for acceptance and affection. Some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood history were wooed then shooed away after the men they tried to win had satisfied themselves, with the only thing they were interested in the first place --- sex! Rita Hayward is who I'm thinking of now as an example.

Men are biologically wired to behave like the animals they often are. They can’t help having lustful, sexual urges. They are biologically implanted in us poor old fellows for the propagation of the human species. We’re like male dogs, in a pack, in “heat”, that cross the highway in the path of eight-wheelers and trains, in pursuit of that elusive flower. Such is the unrelenting, powerful, sexual urge that your boyfriend, husband, brother, son, uncle, and father were burdened with, at birth. So, as we behave like the sexually depraved idiots in that wonderful movie, Animal House, just remember, we are not the architects of our DNA.

It’s an aberration of nature for women to behave in that infantile fashion, indigenous, exclusively, to humans.

Once men emerge from that biologically imposed sexual stupor, satisfied, they usually cannot wait to hit the trail, unless you're interesting, entertaining, and can, most of all, carry on an interesting conversation. Your body may be what gets the guy into the den, initially, but it's your mind that will keep him there.

It is important to remember that most men want a lady, not a floozy, as a permanent partner, in life, unless, of course, the guy is a loser. My dad often expressed to me his appreciation of mom, in that she had never been with another man, in the biblical sense. They knew one another as teens, living on the same street, in Kinston, North Carolina.
Learn to be social animals on several levals, not restrained to being social with friends only. Social skills will take you far in life. Develop a natural love and compassion for others. Go to hospitals and nursing homes and witness true suffering and loneliness. Unless someone in your life forever damaged your ability for empathy and sympathy, you will walk away a changed person.

Learn to be an effective, articulate speaker. Effective communication is one of the most important skills a human being can possess. The ability or inability to speak well creates a lasting impression of you in the mind of the person, to whom you are speaking. I cannot over emphasize the importance of the ability, of the speaker, to hold the attention of the listener.

In conclusion, remember: In all things, do the right thing. Thinking you can outsmart everyone, behaving badly, and thinking you'll get away unpunished is a dangerous concept. Prisons are overcrowded with numb skulls who thought they could. Go to a local jail and walk by the cells of men and women who no longer possess freedom, because of wrong choices made.

You will someday discover that the years between age twenty and sixty will pass by so quickly, in retrospect, it will make your head spin. So make the best of those years. Treat people kindly. Work hard and work smart.

It will serve you well to remember an old saying I learned many years ago, in my youth: "May the pleasures of youth never bring you pain, in old age."