Hope and Determination are Important Tools in Life
Previous StoryNext StoryI had a young friend who needed to write a paper about the most important thing young people need to succeed. It was for an English assignment.
While I was thinking about the answer, she said everyone else had told her the answer was education. I agree that education is essential to success in any person’s life, young or old, but what we must have to reach that goal. It is hope and determination.
Even parents with limited or no formal education can instill the hope and determination to reach for higher goals in their children than what they have acquired.
We can begin instilling hope in children when they are very young. For example, if a child is told at a young age that he can finish high school and go to college, they grow up believing they can.
Sometimes parents are afraid to plant dreams in a child. But the parent doesn’t have to accomplish the goals for the child. Instead, they can instill the tools to achieve them for themselves.
When our children were little, my husband and I were finishing college and working full-time jobs. Our example helped them realize that they could do the same thing.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough money to send them when it came time to continue their education beyond high school.
That didn’t stop either of them because, with their hope, they had determination. Each worked after school, applied for financial aid, and even received some scholarship money to achieve their goals.
We couldn’t afford to give them the dream we had planted in their minds, but we were able to provide them with the tools to acquire that dream. Even in the reality of disappointments and despair, hope is what can pick a person up and keep them taking one step at a time.
Our youngest son became a father during his senior in high school. We felt a great deal of despair. We thought all of his dreams would surely be spoiled. The reality was he would have to take care of the responsibility of our first grandchild.
He did just that. He worked after school, joined the National Guard to earn extra money, finished high school, attended the Art Institute in Atlanta for three years, and eventually his own website design company.
Hope doesn’t have to disappear just because things don’t go as expected. It is part of who we are, what we do every day, and how we face life. If our son had not had hope and determination, the education he wanted would have been out of reach.
Author for Morningcoffeebeans.com