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Why Look You In The Eye? I Don't Like What I See!


Have you ever had that experience where you speak and people just stare at you?  It happened again today.   

A speaker sharing cutting edge strategies for helping young people inspired me and I shared how I saw the connection to a youth group that I'm part of.  Out of the corner of my eye-I caught the rolling of the eye of someone I respect.  At first, I wanted to cower and shut up.  Then I thought...

And adults wonder why it is so difficult for kids to look them in the eye!  Maybe it is because they are avoiding that look of annoyance and disdain and what they might read there.  Looking at disproving adults reflects back a rejection of their ideas and their personhood.  Why be authentic and take risks?

Many of our kids, youth and yes, even adults relate by gut.   By feel.  While they might not understand what in the world your grimace means, they do feel your discomfort and judgement. 

I believe that both kids and adults struggle with initiation because they have been silently trained for years to not take any!  Don't have an original thought and heaven for bid-never question.  

These transparent hearts run through the hidden rules of status quo with wild abandon at first; until they are trained as Pavlov's dogs to stay away from that line drawn in the proverbial sand of tradition and how it is done.

It is not the words that creates generic adults...it is the experiences that kids have over and over again.  


I have decided that my heart is an open book and I'm o.k. with it. 

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