The Expected Never Comes To Pass!

     It's a common story in most of our childhoods: we are anxious more often about things that never happen, than we will ever admit. 


     The first century Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca:
     "There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality." 

     Why didn't they tell us this in school every day? Start the day out, immediately after the morning announcements from the Principal were broadcast over the PA system, with a few words of philosophy that have stood the test of time. We might have made a load of jokes about it but anybody looking back years later would be hard pressed to doubt the efficacy of what this daily pause for reflection in our lives might have contributed to a happier and less anxious childhood for many.

     Maybe the Pledge of Allegiance aimed for a philosophic contribution to our lives by imbuing us with a sense of duty to country. Though the effect of the same pledge every day probably reduced its facility to make us more civic minded. Very little was said about the pledge after we had memorized it in the first grade. It grew by repetition in many cases to merely signify whether or not a teacher possessed the ability to control her or his class with only a glare. If they could initiate the recitation of the pledge without any objections and complete it without any interruptions, then they possessed the minimum capacities required of an educator. Or so it seemed.