Sound Tracks of Experiences

If you are a avid lover of movies, you would almost be able to tell what movie is featuring on your favourite movie station the moment you hear the music played along the movie even when you didn't have a chance to see the title. Sound tracks just bring back memories of a movie to us because they are peculiar and distinct. I can actually recall some right now......!

Over the years i have found out that one of the greatest complaints of teenagers and young people are the fact that their parents do not listen to them or over-react at the slightest things they do. A teenage girl of about 13yrs old once vowed openly in one of our meeting never to be like her mum when she becomes a mother herself....which i find very embarrassing because her mum is a church leader! Even though i cannot  take their words for it sometimes, i have had to look into my own life only to discover how much i had been driven by a certain occurrence or a past experience which formed the basis of my judgement and action to a present situation.

Frederick Buechner in his book 'Listening to your Life' said....'To live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of music. Sometimes we avoid listening for the fear of what we may hear, sometimes for the fear that we may hear nothing at all but the empty rattle of our own feet on the pavement...'. Unpleasant experiences of the past, a sad but preventable occurrence in a close friends life, a story in the newspaper, an aspiration we haven't been able to attain... etc, can become sound tracks in our lives that we hear and is now having significant impact on the relationship we have with our adolescent we love.


Sound track can also have amazing positive impact in our lives especially if their sound in our ears are those of love, confidence, friendship when they were provided by our parents, teachers, grandparents or a mentor.


The way we relate with people especially those of our household is largely determined by the voices that have formed a sound track in our lives....so you find yourselves freaking out the day you notice your daughter or niece goes out with her friends wearing make-up and feeling generally excited when she got back to the point you conclude she must have been with boys and those friends are never to be seen around her anymore!....i believe you can imagine what that will do to her especially if your assumptions were absolute untrue.


Even though experience is said to be the best teacher, you might want to check if the experience has become such a sound track that does not let you listen to the tune of the moment and what effect that may have on your relationship,.....now even though i am an advocate for tween issues, i bet you can also apply this to other relationships in your life and you'll make some awesome discoveries to which adjustments are required.  



Cheers

Timsyn