J. Davy Crockett III

Sometimes, we can look at a thing and not truly “see” it for what it is, from every angle. Our approach to life with its joys, trials, and challenges often depends upon our perceptions of something—how we choose to see—in any given situation. An analogy that seems to fit this human proclivity is how one looks at a diamond, the rarest of precious stones.

You’ll never meet an “average” person. Oh sure, someone might be referred to as “average,” but no one ever sees himself as average. Every person is unique. Certainly, there are some commonalities, but each human being is made up of the genetic hand he or she has been dealt, along with experiences, environment, culture, religion, and other factors of life. Some individuals excel in life and stand out; others live their lives in “quiet desperation” as spoken of by the poet Thoreau.

Depression plagues many people. I’m not talking about having a bad day or feeling blue, which everyone experiences now and then. The depression I’m referring to is the kind of feeling that incapacitates a person with overwhelming feelings of dark and foreboding thoughts that cannot simply be shaken off. It is the kind of depression that drives people to do desperate, often irrational things, including suicide.

Some folks go through life singing, no matter what their circumstances. Such was a friend of mine, a little lady named Elsie, who died May 8, 2009 at the age of 95. One of the last things she did was to sing a hymn with her friends at her nursing home.

Hers was not an easy life. Reared in poverty in Dallas, Texas, she and her older sister, Jessie, who died a few years ago at the age of 94, as children entertained themselves by singing. They sang the songs of their day and they made up their own songs, most of which they never forgot and continued to sing much later in life.

What plays out in our daily news today would have been very shocking only a few years ago. We hear and see things in the news that violate all civil rules for good taste and decorum. Social mores and acceptable behavior have changed dramatically in less than a generation.