#route10LL

Each day on my bus I put up a new life lesson on the wall for the kids to read and I encourage them to submit their own to me to put up as well. There are a few students who read them every day and have contributed quite a few themselves and I’d like to think that even if they don’t read them all, and even if they don’t remember these bits of wisdom I’m trying to impart onto them when in a situation that may call for a particular life lesson…at least they know what to expect.

If something happens on the bus and the kids get in trouble for it, I try to seek out a life lesson to post that will be relevant to that situation and explain to the kids that unless we screw up somehow, we generally don’t learn anything, that the important thing is to learn the thing… I’m pretty good at forgiveness, especially with a bunch of little kids who make mistakes and are still trying to test the waters to see what flies and what doesn’t. The fact that they are also turning in life lessons to me makes me think that at least some of them are looking at the situations they may be in a little differently. Instead of saying why me? Now some of them are saying, o.k., this happened, now what can I learn from this? Maybe I’m reading too much into my own ability to reach people but regardless, that’s what I hope for.

So I thought I might start doing something a little different with my blog here. I’m going to let the readers of BDandLL into our #route10LL world and let you see what I’m posting on the walls of the bus each week and maybe share a story or two about each life lesson. They may be from my own experience, or stories our bus talked about dealing with the life lesson, or if it’s one of those times where the lesson was posted because of something the kids had gotten in trouble for, I’ll write about the situation and how I hopefully turned a bad situation into a moment where the kids were able to see how these life lessons can relate directly to them.

Here we go!

“Go to college, stay in school, if they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.” – Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali may have been the most quotable athlete in his prime. The guy had a swagger to him that led you to believe that he was the cockiest person alive. But more than cockiness, he had confidence. He believed in himself and his own abilities, not because he woke up one day with them, but because he worked his ass off to be the best.

He understood the importance of education, but even more than that, our ability to become whatever we want. He wanted to become world champion, and he did. But he wasn’t all about boxing; it wasn’t the only thing that he had in his life. He was always learning and shaping himself into the person that he one day became. He started out as Cassius Clay, found a faith that he truly believed in and became Muhammad Ali. He didn’t change his name because it sounded cooler or was more marketable, he did it because it coincided with his religious beliefs.

He was also a conscientious objector to the war and so refused to fight in it. He was a man who fought for what he believed in, both in and out of the ring and when he draws his last breath, I doubt he’ll look back at his life with any regrets. The point I believe he was making with this quote is that we all start out as something, moldy bread, and we have the ability to become anything we set our mind to, and education is a tool that we can use to reach our fullest potential.

“If wars can be started with lies, they can be stopped by truth.” – Julian Assange

I probably got our blog and my bus on the national watch list just by using this quote but it went with a problem we’ve been having on our bus, and regardless of the fact that all of work will now be monitored, I believe is an awesome quote!

A few of the kids on the bus have a tendency to fib a bit. The best part is that they can be caught in an act and vehemently deny that they were doing it. They’re kids, I get it, but I’d also like them to know that telling the truth is paramount to our relationships. We had a quote last week too, that read: “If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” (Mark Twain). It’s important to me that the kids understand the importance of being trustworthy. I’ve definitely told a lie or two in my day, but I’m pretty terrible at it so for the most part I’ve given it up. When someone asks you a question and you don’t have to hesitate with an answer because the truth is always the truth…that’s a pretty good feeling. It allows you to just be you and if people don’t like it, so what? The people you want in your life should be real, not ones that you have to lie to, to keep in your life. So tell the truth people, as they say, “The truth will set you free!”

“Life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. So often we hear people talk about going to college to find themselves or how they “truly found themselves in: (college, with a person, etc.).” The truth is, college, like Muhammad Ali stated can help to create you into what you will someday become. People can do the same thing. College is cool because it puts you in a situation where you are lumped with like-minded individuals who enjoy a lot of the same things. You have class with people that are going into the field that YOU choose, and others that enjoy the activities that YOU choose to do. But before YOU do all of that, YOU choose which college to attend!

Are you picking up on the theme here (Hint: it has something to do with YOU)?

I believe in people and their ability to do good. You look me up on Facebook and you’ll see that is what I have as my religion, and what is religion if not a mode of faith? My faith is in people, it’s something that was bestowed upon me by my parents and something I’ve turned into one of my defining characteristics. It’s my choice to believe in people and for the most part it has done nothing but make my life more fulfilling, but I didn’t find that belief, I created it by giving everyone a chance to prove me wrong…and although some may work hard at it, for the most part (To Quote a great friend…who stole the quote from Hemmingway for an awesome Pinterest Board) “The World is a fine place, and worth fighting for…” (The rest of the quote goes, “and I’d hate very much to leave it.”) The whole quote is pretty awesome, and when my day does come I’d like to think that people will miss the person I created with my time here. I hope you feel the same way about yourself!

“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”

I also like the quote, “Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.” But although this seems like the opposite of the daily life lesson, I’d say it may be right in line. Who gets to say what a wise way to spend our time is? We do!

The quote is more about doing the right thing and living your life to the fullest, and sometimes that means doing stupid things with the people you care the most about. I think the “wasted time” quote goes to show us that you make your own fun, and sometimes making time to waste time is the right thing to do…did I lose you?

There’s been several times when I’ve felt down, or a friend has been feeling down and we get together and often do nothing. We may hang out, watch a flick or maybe go have a drink and although many people may consider this wasted time, it’s time that you spent wasting together and that may make the darkest day seem a little brighter.

But the main reason I put this quote up on Friday on my bus was to prepare the kids for a whole week worth of life lessons from one of my all-time favorite people, Jim Valvano. Next weekend we kick off our 9^th Annual Diane Brumwell Memorial “Hoops for Hope” Basketball tournament and the whole thought behind the tourney and how The V Foundation for Cancer Research works lies within this quote.

When our mother was going through a reoccurrence of ovarian cancer we decided that we needed to do more to try and find a cure for cancer so we put together a basketball fundraiser to try and do just that. We raised $4,500 in our first year but later that summer our mother lost her battle. We continued the tournament in her name because we felt like it’s what she would have wanted…then we found The V Foundation, and watched Jim Valvano’s ESPY speech and saw our mom in Jimmy V and knew that this was the organization that would someday make the difference, and we wanted to be a part of it.

 

The message of both organizations could just as well be the above quote, but I hope that it’s also something that the kids remember and try to live by and I hope that it’s something that you stress to your kids and also that you don’t forget it yourself. For more information on The V Foundation click here. To join the “Hoops for Hope” Group on Facebook, click here. Through 8 years of the tournament, we have now raised over $160,000 and gotten bunch of amazing people on board with our mission of one day ending cancer! Maybe you read this and decide that today is a ripe day to start doing right and join us, or maybe you decided to do right in another way…regardless of how you do it, today is a good day to get started!

Alright, that’s probably enough for one blog, besides, I just got done with my taxes so I have to write a letter to my congressman about how to spend all the money they’ll be receiving from me!