Letter to the Editor

You can be what you want to be, but that doesn’t mean that you can become president, rich or famous, but it does mean that each of you can be the type of person that you want to be. It will take your effort, but you can be any kind of person that you want to be. You can be a loving person, a caring person, you can be fair and honest. You and only you can determine the type of person you will be. It won’t be easy, but it is within your control and it is in how you respond to what you have been given and what you experience. You will need to take the best of the culture that you have been born into and the best of the genes and abilities that you have to overcome the flaws in them and to improve yourself. If you have been unfairly treated or have seen someone being unfairly treated, then you can learn compassion for those who have been mistreated or you can feel hatred for those who have done the mistreatment. The choice is yours and it is how you feel and respond to the events in your life that will determine the type of person that you will become. You have to work to be the type of person that you want to be.

If you want to be kind and loving you must be kind and loving. If you win in a competition, then you can feel superior and be arrogant or you can be humble and have respect for those who have competed against you. But it is not success or failure in big things that reveal the type of person that you are, but rather, it is the little everyday things that you do that often goes unnoticed and unrewarded. A kind word, extra attention, helpful instruction, a compliment or correction that you give someone can appear to go unnoticed, but can benefit someone the rest of their life or at the key moment in their life when it is truly needed. You may have been told that you can or cannot change the world, but you and only you can change yourself, and in doing that you will have changed the world and everyone that you will meet. You are the building blocks of the future and what you build will be left for another person. A person whose life is similar to yours, but whose life will start living a little better or worse because you are in it today. Life is the best gift that we have been given, so enjoy the wonders of it and use it wisely.

Terry O’Neill, Lake Geneva Resident and Former Alderperson

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