We need to be doing better than this

I read a very sad thing this week. The suicide of a 14 year old boy. He was gay, and he was being bullied, and he just could not take it any more.

I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care what your religious beliefs are, we are ONE people on ONE planet, we are a global community, and we should be looking after each other.

I don’t give a rat’s arse what your sexual preference is, because it makes no difference to me (and it shouldn’t to you either!)…

And before you leap on your pulpit and bash me with your ‘books’ let me point out: your religious beliefs will tell you that God made this world, that he made each one of us. Right? Do you believe God is an idiot who makes mistakes? He does not make mistakes, and being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, is not a choice it is who a person is. And it is perfect!

And—while I am on a rant—Jesus taught the path of unconditional love. Unconditional love. I am assuming you know what that means! It is not possible to say you follow Jesus and to be filled with hate. It is against what he taught.

We, as parents, need to be doing a much better job of raising our children. We cannot teach them to be bigots, and homophobic bullies. But, we must also understand that a lot of bullying comes from a powerlessness at home. So think about helping your children to meet their need for a little power in their own lives. This can be as simple as some small responsibilities followed by thanks and praise, so that they feel good about who they are, and feel appreciated.

I have seen bullies in school yards who were acting out because of what was going on at home. So, again, I say that as parents we need to be doing a much better job! Consider the impact you are having on your children with how you live your life.

Being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, straight, is a part of who we are it is not all of who we are. The double standard has got to stop! Look at your news and your streets, and it seems that a straight man who beats up his wife and children is accepted as normal (what the?), but a gay boy, or a lesbian couple is just so wrong? Come on, this is sheer craziness! What is important is what kind of person you are. That is what matters. Are you loving? Are you kind? Are you helpful and compassionate? Are you funny? Do you make me laugh? Do you inspire me? This is what matters.

A 14 year old boy…Was he kind? Was he smart? What was his favourite food? What were his favourite movies? What kind of music did he like to listen to? What were his favourite books? What did he want to be when he grew up? Questions that should have been so much more important than the fact that he was gay.

He was gay. So what? Being gay does not mean a guy is going to try and jump every guy he comes across. And being lesbian does not mean a girl is going to put the moves on every girl she ever meets. They are not sexual predators! They simply have a preference.

This gorgeous 14 year old boy should have been accepted for the person that he was, and encouraged to reach his full potential in life. And he needed that from all of us. And we let him down. We let him down.

We need to be better parents. We need to teach better values. We need to love our children a whole lot more. We need to take care of each other as the global family that we are.

Give your pets your best

Okay, so we make the choice to have pets, and so we know what we are getting ourselves into. The joy, the laughter, the games—the vet bills!

What we really don’t think about—and we should not ever let this affect our decision to adopt a pet—is how we will handle it when they die.

My answer to this is really pretty simple: give a hundred percent of your love to your family, friends, and pets, because to give any less is a betrayal of them and of you. Obviously I am talking about the core people in your life, not those who exist on the outer fringes (friends who are really just acquaintances and distant relatives).

Anyway, we were talking about pets…

We don’t think of them dying, and if we do we convince ourselves it won’t be that hard. Fact is, it is hard! It’s really hard when they die.

Oscar died today. Oscar was a beautiful blue budgie. He was my son’s pet, adopted when we moved back from four years living in Singapore, (daughter adopted a cat). Leaving school and friends a second time was hard (the first time was when we left NZ to live in Singapore), and so I asked the children to think about adopting a pet, to give them something to look forward to, to make the journey ahead more appealing! We arrived back in Christchurch 17^th December 2004, and adopted the pets the very next day. Oscar was a hand reared budgie so was completely tame. He developed a real knack for sitting on my shoulder and removing my earrings!

He was a funny bird, and a chatty bird. I never walked past his cage without looking to see where he was and saying hello. And when I came down in the morning I would always talk to him, something like “Good morning Oscar. I will just feel these nagging cats first, then I will uncover you/I’ll uncover you as soon as the heat pump warms this room up a bit more”.

I might be in the kitchen making a cup of tea or cooking, and I never realised until now how much a part of my life (our lives) the sound of him eating his seed was. It was a background sound that was there, as was the sound of him sharpening his beak on the grit perch. His chattering in the background was a part of our lives. His calling to the birds outside in summer was a part of the noise of summer.

Part of the background of our lives has gone, and the space this little bird filled so completely, is empty.

Feeling as I do now, does this make me rethink the whole ‘pets’ thing? Is it worth it? You know what … it is worth is. I would rather love Oscar and grieve at his passing, than have not had him in our lives. I would rather feel my heart break, than have never heard his chatter. Yes, he was so worth it!

If you are going to adopt a pet, give them all of your love, so that when they do pass away, you will know they had the very best of you. Don’t hold back your love in anything out of fear of being hurt. Pain in life is inevitable and unavoidable. It will happen. But what you can do, is make sure you tip the scales the other way, the way of laughter, joy and love, so that they far outweigh the pain.

I look back over Oscar’s seven year life and can celebrate the day he did 60 flips round the perch! I can celebrate the way he loved seed pressed into peanut butter which was spread over a cracker! I can celebrate that he could say ‘Hello’ the same as three different people—he could also say ‘whatchadoin’, ‘budgie buddy’ and one day he called the cats name so perfectly we couldn’t believe it was him! He went crazy over silverbeet! He loved a piece of toast. He could repeat a number of different whistles, that we had taught him. We really did not teach him lots of English words and whistles because we loved the sound of him too! We loved his chatter! We loved the way he would watch whatever anyone was doing in the kitchen. The day he started to go downhill, he still watched me making the birthday cake for my son (Oscar was his budgie).

Every creature has a life span. And I believe we are honoured when we get to take care of a pet for their entire lifespan.