I am about to take you to a view from a different time; and as I mention this, it is timely that I write this to you now in the early days of December. .
I say this because I am reminded of a time when I was living on a farm at the age of 17.
See me? I’m the one over there.
I have short hair now. I am cleaned up but still rather thin. I am fresh from the toxic world with only a few months into this idea of what it means to “stay clean” and be out of trouble.
I am not sure of my surroundings. And of course, since my surroundings were somewhat of a therapeutic community; I had to go along to get along.

Before going forward, I want to say here and now, To Hell With Doubt!
Here’s why:
The one thing I know without any mercy or hesitation is that doubt is contagious. This is easy to catch too. It’s easy because doubt is plentiful; it’s everywhere you look and everywhere you turn.
It’s on every corner. It’s in the hallways outside the classrooms at school. Doubt is in the boardrooms at work and woven into the social structures with laces of fear and insecurity.

There are so many different versions of me, which took place at different times. Of course, there is the younger version of me. There is the scared version and the anxious version. There is the angry version of me and the unhealthy side too.
Not to mention, there is a gentle side and an empathetic side. There is the part of me which has healed and another part of me which has forgiven my trespasses as well as a part that has forgiven those who’ve trespassed against me.

There were days when I was at the top of the crest, riding the waves of luck or good fortune and, of course, there were days when I crushed and tumbled inwards like a wave that crashes into rocks.
There were times when life was calm and other times when life was tumultuous like an angry sea in the center of a miserable storm – yet, in the thick of the storm, there was this part of me who was a witness, staring at the aftermath and looking at the life that was right in front of me.

We are going to rewind for the moment.
For now, we are going to go back to the importance of school and learning the basic relevance of socialization.
What I am about to say is nothing new, nor is this something that I and countless other people have said before.

Same as it is important to learn how to read and write in school, we also learn the different values of socialization in the classes or in the hallways. It is important to note that our learning institutions are more than history and science.
Oh, but wait, I think science is a good word to use here. I think school and the science of our pathology is important to note, especially when it comes to learning how to live or interact.

We are going to fast forward for a moment and bring you up to a more current speed. This comes from a time of only a few years back. I am older now, of course. Fully grown as an adult with the same responsivities as anyone else. I pay taxes. I have a job – more than one.
I am nervous, however, because I am about to do something I had never really done before – at least, not like this.
I am going to take you to the time when I did what I consider to be my first real presentation.

We are moving now, you and me, through a time capsule of sorts. On our way, we are seeing different stations of my life that range from childhood to the teen years. We can stop here for now at the confusing years and the troubled years. As we go, there is special notice of people and how they live or who they choose to live with.
There are the questions that young people have about life and love; or is love real. If so, how does this happen? Then of course, there are the challenges of and ideas of intimate curiosities which are not necessarily the focus at this stop, but I am sure we will get there soon.

I am starting to grow now. Can you see me?
Perhaps not so much physically. I am still smaller than most people but my hair has grown long. I am facing new things and new ideas. I am young but not so young, which means my age is distant from the times when I believed in faith or hope or things like Santa or the Tooth-fairy. I am a mid-teen now.
See me? 

I am about to take you on a different trip now with the eventual emphasis on the word “trip’ itself. But or now, let’s ease into the math of the crowd.
For now, allow your mind to vision the politics of the crowd and the features of varying popularity. Think of the cool kids – or at least, the so-called cool kids. Think of the absolute faceless or the unremarkable.
Now, think about the bad kids. Think about the crazy ones and the subtle initiations we endure to survive in the social surroundings. In a moment, we are going to take a trip “around the world” so-to-speak.
Why I say this is because we are going to visit all the different stations of our social constructs

A time comes when our age comes to mind.
We look back with regards to the moments of our youth. Introspectively, we think about the good times and sift through the warm fragments of great nostalgia. We think back to the beginnings of our whereabouts and the times we had or the places we used to go to.
We think back to the times when our future was unimportant and tomorrow was simply a given. This is what we call our youth. This is where our drills of importance were far removed from our current status of bills and paying for things like insurance or electric.

There comes a time when an awareness comes in the sense of bitter-sweet emotion. This is pure and beautiful yet there are some laces of pain and the sadness of moments in the past.
There are times when these sudden realizations are brought on by the restoration of memory that may come from the smell from a honeysuckle bush which reminds me of a summer in fourth grade – or then again, another trigger could be the randomness of a song which we hadn’t heard since we were kids.

The following requires a bit of vision and imagination; therefore, this can be read and related to at anytime. However, since this is time sensitive, I will keep this in the now and extend this invitation to you, wholeheartedly and wholesomely to be received and welcomed as my family because with all of my heart, this is the most personal item I have to give.
So. . .
You never think much about the future when you’re young. You never think much about the empty chairs at the family get-togethers.
And here it is, Thanksgiving Day.
When you’re young, all you know about is the people around you. All you know about is your favorite cousins and your favorite aunts and uncles. All you know about days like today is that by the time afternoon comes around, you’ll get to see everyone again. 
Maybe the television is on in the family room. Of course, the games are on and all the boys are in the room cheering for their favorite teams.
Can you hear them?
They’re on the couches and the younger ones are sitting on the floor. We are gathered here today to celebrate a feast. But more, we are gathered here to celebrate another year; another time around the sun, and another moment when we were able to get everyone in the same place at the same time.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you with me on a journey down memory lane.
By the way, you are welcome to be young again. In fact, I think it would be helpful if we were to imagine ourselves as kids for this example.