Choosing Your Own Attitude

Castaway Cay

Spring 2010

Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

My senior football player took his time to absorb every nuance of the last sections of Beowulf today. He sat cross-legged on the hallway floor with his back propped against the lockers lost in the world of monster and dragon lairs.

Other students worked in the classroom on their projects, tracking Beowulf's progress as an epic hero through the story.  I guided them to answers, but it was the child in the hall who pulled me like a magnet to his side.

His face was intense and animated as he read of the battle between Grendel's mother and Beowulf. The Last Battle with the dragon, when Beowulf, as an aging king had to defend his people filled him with passion.

He recognized how Beowulf struggled to fight off the powerful dragon on his own. He realized Beowulf needed help. He was ashamed as Beowulf's trusted warriors turned and ran in fear into the woods away from the dangerous dragon.

Wiglaf, Beowulf's friend, won his respect. He thought about the cremation of the dead king, the burial of Beowulf's ashes with the dragon's hoard (those guys didn't deserve any of it anyway, he told me) and he approved of the tower Beowulf's men built over his ashes and treasure.

However, he looked at me with disappointment and sadness and sighed, "I like the story and all; I just don't like the way he died."

"You mean, you don't like how his friends deserted him in his time of need?"

"Yeah--that's  it."

In my other class, we talked briefly about picking our friends carefully. One of the girls joked, "I don't trust anyone!"  Sometimes I wonder how much of that is a joke or is truth couched as a joke.

Betrayal of friends or siblings or even a spouse goes back to Cain and Abel. Betrayal is going to happen.

One of my favorite quotes is from Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor and psychologist who prevented many men from committing suicide inside the camps. 

He believed, "The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance."

------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, Lord for helping me deal with disappointment and hurt and giving me strength to keep a positive attitude through all things.