Empowering Our Kids...And Ourselves: The Quotesmeister Talks to His Twin Teens

An essential aspect of getting to the point of being fully empowered, fully armed lies in taking on the responsibility for your own lives, kids. Mark Twain had one take on that when he wrote, Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. My father's take was that I could be anything I wanted to be . . . so long as I wasn't afraid to work my butt off for it. As anyone familiar with George Bernard Shaw might expect, the magnificent British dramatist had a still pithier viewpoint on the subject: I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. Whew! Talk about your self-starters. But there is an essential truth embedded and embodied by that admonition: If you create your own life, you own it. You choose whether it is to be forceful and commanding or fearful and cowering. Please, you two, opt for the former over the latter. It's a lot more rewarding.