Legislation Of The Heart takes life head on. Addressing many of America's hot topics including married life, single life, politics, racism, raising children, religion and much much more. William Massenburg gives his unique perspective on many different topics giving great food for thought and fuel for discussion.
Legislation of the Heart
Getting Life RightBy William E. Massenburg Jr.AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 William E. Massenburg Jr.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-6164-4Contents
Introduction.................................................................ixI Changed My Mind............................................................1How Is Your Sight, How Is Your Vision?.......................................7Depression and Problem Solving...............................................7Being Average Is a Failing Mark..............................................11American Struggling To Be One (History)......................................13A Standard...................................................................17What Is Love?................................................................20Why does it Matter?..........................................................20Connecting Love to You.......................................................26Love Removes Selfishness Dedicated To Love...................................29Blueprints and No Concept....................................................31It is How You Play the Game..................................................31America Unraveling...........................................................38The Original Design..........................................................40The Problem..................................................................42Tolerating Each Other Not Loving Each Other..................................42Heart Disease of America.....................................................46Injustice....................................................................46A Leader's Heart.............................................................48Youth, Media and the Fame god................................................52Women's Liberation...........................................................58Some Idea's that Are Not Lady Like...........................................58An Authentic Heart...........................................................61RACE.........................................................................64Passing On a Diseased Heart..................................................67Race Opinions................................................................70Genarlow Wilson..............................................................75Making It Personal Abandonment...............................................79Reputation vs. Responsibility................................................86She Is Royalty...............................................................90Abortion.....................................................................93"Broken Processor"...........................................................96Young Minds..................................................................96Marriage Broken, but Healing.................................................99The Money Issues In Marriage.................................................101Sex Issues In Marriage.......................................................104Marriage And Compromise......................................................110Being Gay My Christian Perspective...........................................112Gangster Rap Gaining the World In Exchange For Your Soul.....................116Compromised..................................................................120Not Good For Our Witness, Make It Good.......................................120Ashamed and Alone............................................................123Quiet Suffering in the Church................................................123Is Healing Available.........................................................127HIV..........................................................................129We are the Cure..............................................................129Gods The Answers.............................................................136
Chapter One
I Changed My Mind
Getting life right as just a statement may seem like an insurmountable task. For each of us it is a life long task that will not end until the day that we die. It is a cumulative body of work that leads you to the right or wrong ending. Getting life right is as much about the future as it is the present. Getting life right does not mean that you will never make a mistake. It means you will learn from past mistakes and will push to not repeat them. It means looking further than the present and seeing the future in order to make the latter better then the former or the present. This requires a changing of the mind.
Many people are suffering at this very moment because of bad choices. Many have made bad personal decisions in money, relationships, careers, school, and friends that have come back to cause them great pain and suffering. Think about the bad relationship that turned abusive, the decision to buy that thing when you knew it was not a good idea, think about that job you hate that takes up all your day everyday because of the choice not to pursue a dream that burned inside.
Mistakes are something that no one can avoid, but those mistakes do not have to be the end for us. Mistakes leave a question. What do I do now? Many people get stuck at the question and it becomes this unmovable barrier that blocks them from going any further in life.
Why is it that people can make mistakes and know that they are mistakes but they remain paralyzed by that one decision for years? That mistake does not have the power to handcuff your life unless you allow it to. A mistake or a failure is just an opportunity to start over better informed then when you started the first time. Don't let your mistakes and failures be the end of your growth. You just found one more way that did not spell success for you but it put you one more step closer to finding the right way in life for you. If you are stuck behind that mistake you made, change your mind.
Change your mind about how you see your mistake. See it as an effort that did not work out but do not allow it to be the end of your attempts. Could you imagine a quarterback throwing a bad pass and not throwing again, or a basketball player missing on a jump shot and not shooting again? I am a firm believer that your problem does not define who you are but how you handle your problem does. The quicker you are able to get over your mistakes and failures the more successful you will be. Some of the best businessmen in the world from Bill Gates to Donald Trump would need days to tell you about the mountains of bad choices and decisions they made that helped them make the right ones that have catapulted them to the top of there professions.
I never paid much attention to the stories about Michael Jordan and how he was cut as a sophomore from his high school basketball team. Every time I saw him I thought that school must have had some really good players or a really dumb coach. It was not until I read what Michael Jordan had to say about him being cut that I saw the relevance to this section of the book.
In 1984 Michael Jordan was drafted to the Chicago Bulls and finished as one of the NBA's leading scores and Rookie of the year. Just 5 years earlier he was not good enough to make his high school team. Michael said after being cut instead of giving up he used it to push him forward. He practiced harder then ever and Jordan said "Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it," Jordan said, "and that usually got me going again." That was a failure, maybe he knew he did not practice hard enough the first time. He did not allow that failure to handcuff him. He never said maybe I should play football or baseball. He said he practiced harder then ever, that leads me to believe that he knew he could have done more in the first place, he had an idea of how to fix his mistake and he applied it and it worked.
Bill Gates dropped out of college. He did not complete his degree but yet he is one of the wealthiest men the world has ever seen. It did not come without struggle. I saw Bill Gates on television one night talking about his life and career. He said that he was in high school when he got the idea about the computer being smaller. He said he was told by so many people that the bigger companies had already thought about it and they would do it. He was not encouraged to pursue the vision he had. He said he met Paul Allen and his dropping out was because he was in a rush to capitalize on his vision before someone else did. Not having a college degree and challenging the computer industry is probably not the best plan by most peoples thinking but for Bill it worked. When asked about his failures he said that they were numerous and kind of made a joke of it. The richest man in the world has a history of failures that helped him spring forward into the great business mind that he is today. His failure did not hold him back. He is not alone, Donald Trump has bankruptcy after bankruptcy because of bad business dealings, Robert Kiyosaki and others have a list of challenges that moved them to change there minds about how they saw their situations.
This is not just about business but it fits our personal life as well. People enter into bad relationships everyday across the world. Those failures and bad choices should not ruin hope for future success. You should change your mind and see it as a move towards your destiny. Many women and men enter into terrible romances, and friendships only to remain trapped with unproductive, fruitless connections. Here is really where you should change your mind.
Many women have been abused and many have changed their minds about those situations. They took the bad decision and failed decision for what it was worth, they got away, learned and moved forward to have successful, healthy relationships. Sometimes in the area of romance it is a little harder to change your mind. To cut people and the baggage that comes with them away so that you can be free and pursue your true destiny. People put a lot into these relationships and it makes it hard to change their thought process about the person they are dealing with.
When you are heavily invested in something it is important to recognize whether or not it is a good or bad investment. You eventually have to evaluate the productiveness of the emotional relationship that you are in and see is it worth what you are putting into it. Many people know when they are investing themselves into relationships that are bad for them. They know the mistakes they are making and try to stick it out hoping things change. I would rather change my mind and move forward and wait for that investment to get on board with what I am doing instead of hoping it changes and take me where I want to go. When it comes to your finances you would not pour all of your life's worth into a failing company because you don't want to lose all of your money. It is the same with your life, if you pour it into a failing personal relationship then you will eventually lose your life in what ever way you give it. If you give your body to abuse, if you give your mind to stress, if you give your emotions over to pain and hurt then you have invested yourself into a failing company and you will lose everything. Change your mind and your actions so that you can learn from your mistakes and make tomorrow better then today.
How Is Your Sight, How Is Your Vision? Depression and Problem Solving
Many people never take time to think about the difference between sight and vision. The two terms are normally synonymous. In my life I have come to see these two terms in two totally different ways. Having sight is good but having vision is better. When you understand the power of vision you will begin to see life more clearly.
Sight is a term relating to how well you see physically. Sight is for seeing color, shapes and figures. It is whether or not you can see the literal things of life. You can have good eye sight, or you can be totally blind or legally blind with some sight. This form of seeing is important to our daily lives but it is not the most important form of seeing.
Vision is not whether or not you have sight but how clear do you see. The type of vision I am talking about is how clearly you see your situation internally, your relationships and your life in general. Many people have sight to see the obstacles, the people, and the circumstances before them but they lack vision to clearly put things into their proper category and place in order to make their lives better. For many people their sight is good but their vision is poor.
Recognizing your problem simply takes sight but seeing a better end requires vision. Situational pity parties have a tendency of growing into life long ruts. People become stuck behind the obstacle that is in their path and they lose their vision of where they are going. Depression in my opinion is an imbalance. It is an imbalance of sight and vision. Their sight is perfect but when it comes to vision they are legally blind.
This is not an attack on those who have suffered with depression but I am offering a different perspective than the one that reoccurs day after day and night after night. The common statements you hear from people who are depressed is that they can not seem to get out of the rut they are in, they can not seem to get pass the problem, the same feelings just will not leave them alone.
Being diagnosed as with a mental illness from depression to post traumatic stress disorder for a military veteran can both be traced back to lack of vision. Sometimes things can happen in life that are truly horrible and when that mountain of a problem is placed before people it can seem impossible to conquer. Some people have very large mountains like molestation, sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, the shock of war, and sometimes things are just not fair when you look at the playing field. These things lead us to seek advice from friends, family, or even doctors to find a solution. What people are really seeking is vision. When you ask someone what do you think? You are asking, what is your vision of this problem, how do you see it and can you show me what you see?
When there is a diagnosis of these mental illnesses like depression or PTS what they are really saying to you is that you have been through something that you don't know how to get over. There is something in your way that you have the sight to notice clearly but lack vision capacity to see past it at this present time.
Many people get prescribed medications to forget about the problems. Not in all cases but in many cases medicine is a tool used to create a mirage of open terrain, that mirage seems just to fade away when the effects of the medication where off and there is the mountain again, bigger than ever. This causes some to fall lower then before because what they thought was gone has for some reason reappeared. Medicine is a quick fix but as soon as the drugs where off the problem is still there weighing them down. The imbalance that really needs to be corrected is the lack of vision. Good counselors can work to correct the vision problem while using medication to stabilize the client.
Stopping at the sight of a problem is not an option. The problem is real and yes it is there, it has to be acknowledged. It does not have to be accepted as the end. We must know the difference in when we are using our vision and our sight.
When you are going to be late for something, sight tells you what time it is, vision tells you to call that someone to let them know so that they will not worry or be disappointed when you do not arrive at the expected time. Your sight shows you the problem but your vision shows you how to get past it. Sight shows you that there is an obstacle and vision show you that there is a solution. How well are we seeing?
Life teeters on vision. It decides whether you will go up or down. Vision will dictate whether you can free yourself from a bad relationship, can you see something better for yourself? Vision will dictate how you spend your money, and reveal how and when more is coming in. Vision will dictate how you deal with pain. Can you see the bright side of a dark day?
No more can you afford to be stuck with great sight and poor vision. Seeing only the problem before you will push you into hasty and false conclusion. Vision generates peace and patients. Develop vision in the area of life in which you struggle. I believe a great scientist said energy can not be created nor destroyed but only transferred. When you can harvest the energy of your obstacle and your problem and apply vision and direction to it you now have power.
Being Average Is a Failing Mark
If you are average what does that say about you? What does the term average really mean? You could describe average as the mean, the median point, or middle point between a good and poor. Many people consider themselves to be average. So I guess they are not good or poor quality people, they are just hanging in the middle.
To be fair some people use this as a figure of speech but there are people who use this as an excuse to not pursue greatness in life. The fear of failure breeds contentment. Contentment that produces stagnation equals failure. Regardless of the reasoning if you know you settled for something less then your dream you have actually failed. You failed because you did not continue to try to reach what you were striving for. Not reaching the goal is not the failure but giving up the fight is the failure. Once you are out the game you have no chance to win. So stay in the fight, if the bell rings and it is all over, then be able to say I completed all I could.
Being willing to compete is what makes you a winner. Having a C which is average is not failing if it is the best you could do before the grading period ends. If a C is all you strived for then you are literally striving to be the top of the bottom. If your goal is to do enough at your job to get by you have decided to be the best of the worst in your career. Average is the top of the bottom. Excellence is the best period.
American Struggling To Be One (History)
Why is The United States in such a social struggle and upheaval? This is a question that continually plagues us as both a country and as a people. Why has crime become more frequent, prevalent, and vicious than ever before? Why is it that race relations seem worse today then they were fifty years ago? The fate of the American family is in question in a way it has never been before. What happened to our standards? Not the standards of living per say, but the standards by which we, as an American people, have chosen to live, or, more perhaps more accurately, have chosen to live without? The engine of progress that once drove and stimulated our culture into overdrive has fallen back into idle as of late, and threatens to stall out completely if we don't do something to prevent it.
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Excerpted from Legislation of the Heartby William E. Massenburg Jr. Copyright © 2009 by William E. Massenburg Jr.. Excerpted by permission.
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