The Story of a Kite – and a lot more

 

I’ve been thinking of the story of a young boy who wanted to fly a kite. He built a kite with his dad and then they went to the park on a windy day. It was the perfect recipe for flying a kite. The boy held on to the roll of string and the father lifted the kite up into the air and the wind picked up the kite and took it higher and higher in the air. After a while the son decided that he wanted the kite to go much higher. He said he would cut the string so the kite could go higher. The father warned him that it was the fact that the string was attached to the kite that allowed the kite to stay up in the air at all. He tried to explain that the kite being tethered to the string was necessary. The son disagreed and decided to cut the string. To the boy’s surprise and sadness, the kite spun out of control and dove to the earth and crashed.

Here’s my take on that story. When we lose our grounding and don’t understand or follow the very principles of attaching our purpose to foundational values that allow our lives to soar, we ultimately end up out of control and our lives begin to dive downward and sometimes we even crash. We get out of sync and out of control. We become something we aren’t proud of and lose our ability to feel joy and fulfillment.

Symptoms of losing our personal string and foundational tether can be seen everywhere. Try reading the anonymous comments that are listed below an Internet review of innocuous things like a car or a camera. It doesn’t take very many comments before people start getting personal, mean and out of control. People post rants on Facebook, or worse, use Facebook as a way to create negative attention to themselves. They’re looking for affirmation by getting “Likes” or by finding others who are equally angry and out of control. It’s become the new fad – to be out of control, angry, say regretful things and tear down anyone who doesn’t hold the same opinion as you do. And when we can do it anonymously, we give ourselves permission to be even worse and uglier and meaner. There is no clearer evidence of this lose of grounding than reading the daily news of what is going on in our nation’s capital. We can see the divisions and true animosity and meanness at the highest levels of leadership of all parties of government. They attack anyone who differs in opinion as if they were a foe to be destroyed and hated. It’s like we’re all just wandering around being angry and looking for someone to have a problem with if they disagree with your opinions.

This way of looking at the world creates nothing but animosity, bad feelings, tribal mentality and division. I consider our societal trends as a real life version of a kite crashing down to the earth. We’ve lost our civility, our ability to filter or control our thoughts or feelings, our moral compass, and often our tether to God and His eternal truths. We’ve lost our ability to love others and to resolve differences like adults. We’ve lost our ability to see anything but our own views and justification for how we want to live. No one else’s opinion matters. We have cut the string and given ourselves permission to get all our nourishment from eating cookies, frosting and Cheetos 24/7. And society is starting to look like that’s all we eat.

If I were to end my blog here with only complaining and pointing out faults, I would be violating my own purpose for having a blog. Never fear, I do have a solution. We need to allow ourselves to be tethered to the things that will allow our personal and societal kites to fly and remain happily aloft in the sky.

Here are my suggestions:

• Look at others as our brothers and sisters and children of God. Accept that they have a right to have opinions too.
• Quit making anonymous, mean comments online. Just stop it.
• Look for someone to help each day. Actually do something positive and good daily.
• Do more things that bring consensus and fewer things that create division.
• Tether yourself to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. They are the only source of true happiness, joy and peace.
• Listen to the words of a living prophet – President Russell M. Nelson. It will change your life.
• Read daily in the scriptures and reduce or, better, stop reading angry or inflammatory commentary.
• Smile more. Listen more. Talk less.
• Learn to love yourself. People that truly love themselves end up having more friends. Try it.
• Reach out to someone you have had a problem with and make peace. Apologize and ask for forgiveness. They might just do the same back, but if not, either way you’ll feel a whole lot better because you did it. Your overall anger levels will begin disappearing.