PREPARING for LIFE - a book for 13-15 year olds

DID YOU EVER STOP to think what life is all about? As I woke this morning a little later than usual (it's holiday time) I could hear the cars and trucks - thousands of them - tearing up and down the four busy lanes of a nearby highway. It's one of the busiest roads in the country: 50,000 cars a day. I thought to myself: "Rat Race" is a good description: people rushing and racing off to work and racing each other to the city; racing to make a living; racing to have meals; racing to do some shopping; racing to get home. I thought: WHY do people race and rush? What the use of it all? We're all going to die sooner or later and we can't take our dollars with us - so why bother working so feverishly? We're lucky if most of the time we just have enough to pay our bills. Wouldn't it be great to escape to a beautiful country area and live a slow, leisurely life in the peace and quiet. But then I suppose you'd miss all the activity and excitement of the city.

I GUESS WE ALL THINK LIKE THAT SOMETIME - and it's good that we do, for it's our ability to stop and think about things which makes us human beings different from ordinary rats. If we want to, we can control our lives the way we choose. We don't have to race through life like rain water speeding down the gutter. We have the power to stop and say: "Hold it, I refuse to flow another millimetre. I'm going this way ,not that , and at my own pace, too!"

IF YOU ARE AN ORDINARY STUDENT, you should by now be stopping quite often to check your bearings in life. You should be asking quite often "What is life all about? Where have I come from? Where am I going to? What will I be? What is the point of it all?" You have a responsibility to live your life well, and you should be looking forward to adulthood. To face up to life you must show courage, especially at times when everyone seems to be against you and no-one seems to care about you.

TO HELP YOU DO SOME solid stopping and thinking, pretend that your life is only 24 hours long (..just like a kind of moth which is born and dies in a day: how hard it must be to squeeze a whole lifetime into 24 hours!).
Using all your mathematical skill, do it this way: Let 24 hours = 72 years (which is about our average life span) then 1hour = 3 years which means that: if you are 15 years old, you are at 5:00 a.m. if you are 18 years old, you are at 6:00 a.m. if you are 14 years old, you are at 4:40 a.m.

FOR MOST OF YOU, your "day" (= life) is just beginning. Your have your life in front of you. At this moment (about 5:00 a.m.) you are still in bed. But soon it will be time to wake - and live. What are you going to do with your day/life? Are you going to have a happy day? Are you going to just sit about and do nothing? Are you going to do something worthwhile? Are you going to get out of bed in time for breakfast - or are you lazily going to curl up until lunchtime? 

ARE YOU GOING TO WASTE YOUR DAY
or plan it out? It's never too late to do something good in life. Even if we don't start until 11:30 at night, there's still time. But you are not at 11:30 p.m...you are at about 5:00 a.m. - and your whole day, your whole life is in front of you!

SO AS YOU PREPARE TO JUMP OUT OF BED (..mind the cat!..) be determined to live life well. Realize that life is full of meaning, and a happy life is a meaningful life. For sure life can be tough at times, but not all the time, so face up to it with confidence.

START TO WORK OUT YOUR IDEAS, your values, your priorities for life - the guiding principles on which to build your life. As you get out of bed, ask some Big Questions: "Do I know what life means? Why was I born? What will I be?" Be brave and ask some even bigger questions: "What does the future hold for me? When will I die? What is death? If there a life after death? Is there a God? How can I know that God exists? If God exists, how can I know what He wants me to do?" THAT'S THE WAY: take everything inside your mind and spread it out over a table and see what you've got (..don't spill the sauce..). Sort everything out. It's your life, your "Day" - use your Explorer to check all the files!

THAT'S WHY YOU'RE ALIVE: God created you! He gave you the gift of life, existence. Everything a great artist makes is valuable; you, therefore, must be most valuable, because God is the greatest of all artists. To destroy or damage yourself would be like burning ten million dollars. Since you are worth so much, you must take good care of yourself and have a healthy respect and reverence for your life - a healthy self-respect.

 HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT if someone borrowed all your CD's and destroyed them? You would expect him to take good care of them. Well, your life is like a CD in God's collection. He's lent it to you - take good care of it!

AND WHAT A RECORD YOU ARE! You have a brain with millions of cells, smarter than the most expensive computer. You have arms and legs which move with such ease that the most advanced robot looks clumsy by comparison. You have eyes that can see things millions of kilometres away (100,000,000, like the sun). You have a heart which beats 100,000 times a day! You have living blood inside you which travels over 100,000,000 kilometers a day!

 NEVER THINK TO YOURSELF: "I'm worthless, I'm useless". Not true. You are a work of art, more precious than a champion racehorse or a famous painting. "You are worth more than many sparrows", Jesus says (Mt 10.31)

 IF YOU HAD A PRECIOUS SPORTING TREASURE (like a football autographed by everyone in your favorite team) you'd guard it like the Crown Jewels. You'd lock it away, take care of it, hire an armoured car to take it across the road to your friend's place....So, in the same way, you must look after yourself, because you, too, are a valuable treasure. Not to value yourself means you are destroying God's creation; not to value yourself means you are not being fair to yourself, not giving yourself a real chance to live properly.

AIM ALWAYS TO HAVE A HEALTHY SELF-RESPECT. Use this check list:
* Think and live Positively. Be optimistic and cheerful. Try to smile more. Refuse to be sad. Be encouraging and positive in your speech. Avoid being negative and over critical.
 * Avoid polluting your body with drugs, cigarettes, too much alcohol. Get plenty of sleep - aim at 8 hours, preferably a couple of hours before midnight.
* Realize that everything made by God is a work of art. So show respect for animals, for the environment, for people's property - and especially for other people.
 * Develop yourself as a work of art. Take an interest in some sport or activity. At your age it's better to play too much sport than too little. Sport helps you to live and work with other people; helps you to adjust socially and to develop confidence, responsibility, leadership.
 * Learn to dance. Learn old dances and new ones. Being able to dance will be a source of happiness for the rest of your life.
 * Have a hobby - something that will further help you to enjoy life and live more fully.
 * Have a pet (not necessarily a scorpion or a dinosaur). The responsibility of looking after a living creature is satisfying and good for character development. This will help you to treat people kindly, too. Patience, self-control and thought for others are the main ingredients for a good master/mistress - all useful qualities for later life.
* Increase your control of yourself, your self-control. Without self-control you'll be like a car without any steering. Self-control means steering your actions, being able to control your desires, feelings, emotions. It comes with practice - so try doing without something occasionally (e.g. no t.v or no ice cream on Friday...) or try doing something extra (e.g. help with dishes and other home chores) to show you are your own boss. The season of "Lent" is a good time for this. And try to get control of your structure: hold your shoulders back, walk straight, sit up straight. All good targets for people who spend 25 hours a day in front of a screen!

 THINK FOR A MOMENT OF SOME OF THE COMMUNITIES TO WHICH YOU BELONG: Family, school, suburb, sporting team, youth group, church, city, country. The word "belong" has two sides: you feel you belong to your family/school/team when other people care about you, are interested in your welfare and love you. But in order to feel wanted and cared about we have to make an effort to belong

There was once a young girl who decided to leave home because no-one seemed to care about her . But she gave people little chance to care as she was rarely home, never did any jobs around the house and didn't take an interest in the activities of her brothers and sisters. No wonder she didn't have a sense of belonging.

A SENSE OF BELONGING means you join in--whether it be in a sporting club, parish or family. This is not hard because mixing with other people is one of the happiest things we can do. Perhaps it's because you don't mix enough that you sometimes feel neglected and lonely. Move out, join in -- and don't let the hours tick by with your doing nothing. Activity and involvement will help you grow.

 TRY TO MAKE YOUR PERSONALITY a bit more outgoing. At the moment you are possibly isolated. No wonder you are at times scared of life. Realize that you have a lot of friends in the world waiting to meet you. Make an extra effort to make more friends. At a dance do you join in -- or just sit around like a book on the shelf? Whether at dances or at home, instead of sitting around doing nothing, get moving and join in with whatever is going on--otherwise you might be like the non-hero in Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock": selfish, hard to get along with, not caring, unhappy, unwilling to mix, lacking friends, having no feelings, feeling no pain, experiencing no love.

 SO DON'T BE A ROCK -- be involved and start now to realize that life means community. Try to understand that being involved in community (family, parish, sporting team, school) makes you a better person because you learn to live with other people as they really are. Do some thinking also about the fact

1. that the whole human race is a family.
2. that the Church is a community -- the Christian Community which continues to grow under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
3. that community means friends (and, as we'll see later, your greatest friend in life is Jesus Christ, God himself).

(Eucharistic Prayer 3)

 THE MORE WE FACE UP TO our responsibilities the better we are at living life. All those everyday responsibilities duties, jobs, tasks -- everything from making your bed to cleaning shoes, jobs, around the house, homework, duties at school, duties in a club/team -- these are all good for you if you face up to them and get down and do them properly. They help your personality grow and mature. But if you avoid them and run away from them, you will never grow up. Running away from responsibilities is not only cowardly; it just doesn't help at all.

 WE SHOULD ALWAYS DO THINGS when we can and not put them off till another time. If you put things off while you're young, then you'll put them off when you're an adult. Remember the old saying: "Procrastination (use your dictionary..) is the thief of time." Do you want to become the sort of Dad who won't bother mowing the lawn until a child is lost in the grass? Or the sort of Mum who won't wash up until the sink collapses with dirty dishes?

Responsibility means that you are concerned enough to do things. Responsibility means you are concerned first and foremost about people. There are many people in the world who need you -- people like your future family and friends. For their sake -- and for the sake of becoming a successful human being in this world -- you must be overflowing with all the ingredients that make a responsible person; you must be reliable, trustworthy, a person of your word. You must be honest -- so that people can depend on you to keep away from the cash register. If you don't become responsible, no one will trust you in anything you do.

 BEING RESPONSIBLE MEANS THAT you care, you remember , you're reliable, you're trustworthy. Who would want to be married to an irresponsible husband/wife? Who would want an irresponsible Father/Mother?

 NOW IS THE TIME TO START practising at being a responsible person. Young people who carry out responsibilities well now, become the Fathers and Mothers who carry them out well in the future. Welcome the chance to show how responsible you are by doing your duties and jobs as well as you can. Try always to be a responsible person who knows right from wrong and is able to make decisions for himself. Basically, be a person who cares. If you really care about someone or something, you won't be forgetful, you won't be careless, you won't be lazy, sloppy or late. Usually, "I forget" means "I don't care." Life for you must mean I care.."