In the fall, about 80 listeners to Michael Josephson’s radio commentaries submitted essays describing how his daily messages affected their lives. Ten finalists were selected, and a vote of readers of Michael’s newsletter and this blog selected the winners.
Here is the entry of one of the five winners, Pat Chambers.
I can’t remember the exact year, but I remember the experience. I am sitting at a PTA California state convention as a first time attendee and my head is spinning with all the PTA information. Someone told me don’t miss the workshops given on broader subjects so I picked Michael Josephson’s workshop.
Mr. Josephson made the statement, “Think about what kind of family you are going to be.” He gave examples: We are a family that throws our trash away at Burger King, that returns shopping carts to the right places, that says thank you to service people. I knew what type of a family we were going to be.
I became an avid reader of the commentaries on line as I needed that boost to keep my resolve on what type of a family we were going to be.
Often as my children grew I would print out a commentary and it would become dinner time discussion.
I used commentaries at meetings, forwarded them to friends who started to receive the commentaries.
Their children came into my home knowing my expectations of truthfulness, kindness and integrity would be because we have had a weekly class on parenting.
What type of a family are we going to be? We are a family I can be proud of, not without problems, but with the ethics to work through them.
This will affect how my grandchildren are parented and it will affect my family for generations to come.