A CNN series, Chicagoland, documented the challenges of a principal at an inner city high school, who worked to keep her students alive and out of jail. Despite her best efforts, one of her favorite young men, call him Tony, ended up behind bars. She visited him regularly, tutored him through his GED, pushed for his early release. When the prison gate closed behind him and he spotted her in the parking lot, he ran to her––a child again, wrapped in a mothers embrace, his face lit with affection, innocence and optimism. I knew he’d make it.
She moved him into a halfway house. A mentor arranged a job interview and planned to drive him there. But Tony neglected to set his alarm clock. He missed the interview and dissappeared from the halfway house. His story line ened with him back in jail, charged with robbery.
Why? I needed to blame someone. And the logical choice was Tony. He wasted all those opportunities to transform his life. Why couldn’t he manage to set an alarm clock?
Ramesh said man acts according to his nature. Everyone is created with a set of characteristics. Life expresses through us according to those characteristics. If life were to have expressed through him as a boy who made his way out of the ghetto, he would have had the thought, I need to set my alarm. Instead, life expressed as a Tony who would spend more time in jail.
I live in my own Chicagoland, stuck in situations I should have powered through by force of self-discipline, blaming myself for failure to transform.
But no … there’s no one to blame. Tony and I are innocent.
She moved him into a halfway house. A mentor arranged a job interview and planned to drive him there. But Tony neglected to set his alarm clock. He missed the interview and dissappeared from the halfway house. His story line ened with him back in jail, charged with robbery.
Why? I needed to blame someone. And the logical choice was Tony. He wasted all those opportunities to transform his life. Why couldn’t he manage to set an alarm clock?
Ramesh said man acts according to his nature. Everyone is created with a set of characteristics. Life expresses through us according to those characteristics. If life were to have expressed through him as a boy who made his way out of the ghetto, he would have had the thought, I need to set my alarm. Instead, life expressed as a Tony who would spend more time in jail.
I live in my own Chicagoland, stuck in situations I should have powered through by force of self-discipline, blaming myself for failure to transform.
But no … there’s no one to blame. Tony and I are innocent.