MY Life

What I’ve learned

To start out with i would like to share a brief introduction to my story. This is a historically stand alone post, but I feel like adding on to it.

Born in La Grande Oregon on February 4th 1994 my brother Allan was born atypically. Flash forward 2 years, April 30th, I am born healthy and loudly crying, my parents were happy for that, in Scottsdale Arizona. Flash forward two more years February 3rd and a move to Los Angeles California, my sister Mia, also born atypically. What is atypical? My brother and sister were born with a genetic defect, Cri-Du-Chat, which is French for cry of the cat, Simply put they cry ever so quietly when they are young, like a cats cry. Cri-Du-Chat causes mental retardation, and other physical effects. For example my brother cannot gain weight, however he has great gross motor skills. My Sister has always been a chubby blonde haired child, she has terrible gross motor skills, but her fine motor skills are great. Here is snippet of my abnormal life.

So flash forward to my first memories of my brother and sister. Playing in the back yard of my current house, in the dirt. We owned two yellow steel Tonka trucks, and my brother and I would sit in our backyard and play with them, I never even realized he was developmentally delayed, until I was probably six. I knew that I was smarter and bigger than my sister, but I was older, I was also bigger and smarter than my brother, and I didn’t get that he was older than me. This confused me at the start, and I began to wonder why that was, eventually my parents explained the situation to me. Right then and there I loved my brother even more.

He was always my friend, my lovable goofy brother who has the most contagious smile you have ever seen. However there is no perfect child. One day, I remember quite vividly we have air vents in our floor. Allan pulled one out when I was probably ten; he just left it there, upside down. Keeping in mind he has been told not to play with the air vents and leave them out, they have sharp edges. However when I got in the room something entirely different made me mad and literally I was hopping mad I’m sure you get the rest of the picture. That’s my awesome brother for you, in a nutshell, lovable and goofy, sometimes obnoxious.

My sister is a goof ball too. She would always go in my room, and B“borrow” (*cough* steal *cough*) my stuff and play with it, and when I would get home from football or wrestling she would go and hide, of course not what I enjoyed most.

A year ago she was diagnosed with Angioimmunoblastic T-cell Lymphoma; this is beyond rare,there have only been a couple cases of anyone under 20 having this form of cancer in history. She went through her first round of chemo, no longer chubby, no longer blonde. She went to Salt Lake City in early November to get a bone marrow transplant from her own cells, anticipated to be there for three months came home in early December on my dad’s birthday, with new dark brown hair. They thought that the cancer was gone, they were wrong. In June they found the cancer was back so they started several new drugs for chemo.My sister and mom just got home on teh 25th of November. This time however the donor of the bone marrow was our sister Jessica age five. Everything went fine they think, all of Mia’s bone marrow is now Jessica's, which is good.

My siblings have taught me so many things; patience, responsibility, Trust, understanding, listening, patience, love, respect, kindness, long suffering, and did I mention patience. My siblings are who I am, and I am their protector.

What I Have learned

I feel it will be simpler for me to write this out in a more list like fashion so here it goes:

Be appreciative of your time with people, they’re not always there

Everyone is very special and we need to be receptive of what they have to offer us and what we have to offer them. Our time on this Earth that we share is so short. We need to spend every minute every second wisely. Wisely is whatever it needs to mean to you.

leftovers are only good for so many days

When you have food you sometimes make too much, and what do you do with the rest you save it up for a later date. That’s all good and dandy but no one wants to eat the same food for lunch and dinner three days in a row. This applies to life in a sense that our ideas and our content needs to change in order to stay fresh and interesting to the pleasure centers of the Human body.

People are truly good

If you give anyone a chance to be good, I truly believe they will. However that is because when you help someone else your’e really helping yourself and that is what some people realize. Sadly some people in our world don't quite get that. I hate to say it but the phrase pave it forward comes to mind. That’s why helping others is actually good for ourselves. When we help one person be better, then the whole world is better, and therefore the world that each of us have to interact with on a daily basis, therefore on average is better. So give people the opportunity to be good.

We all have our personal struggles

We all have something that we are working through, and if you don’t your’e lying. If we all took a step back and realized that in fact none of us are perfect we would learn a whole lot from others. When we don't expect others to be perfect they get breathing room and can work better. This applies to both parenting and business ventures, because after all a boss is really just the parent of his employees. if we give everyone breathing room everyone will be at a lower stress level, and then innovation can occur. When we are high stress we start to tense up, both physically and mentally, and neither of those is good for longevity. So just give everyone a break, when you get cut off, assume they have a pregnant wife in the backseat or they are pregnant.

Take a break

This one ties back up to that one ^. We can not solve everything at once so we need to take breaks, and not worry about what we cant fix. I have learned multiple times that sometimes its better to take a break and breathe (after all that's why football is such a more interesting sport to watch than soccer :).

There’s a list of some of the things that have stuck out to me over the last few months, if you would like a deeper delve into my mind feel free to visit my blog yurspot.blogspot.com. I dont post to regularly but I attempt to. Thanks for reading!