Charley & Terry and Michael & Fredo

We have a loyalty to each other as human beings, but we expect the family that shares our blood to have the deepest loyalty. I looked at the movies "Godfather II" and "On the Waterfront" recently. Terry Malloy and Michael Corleone were betrayed by their brothers in separate ways. Terry's brother Charley was killed by gangsters and Michael was a gangster himself, so he arranged for his brother Fredo to get killed. Fredo's crime was giving Michael's rival gangsters information about his business dealings that motivated a failed attempt on his life. Charley arranged Terry in his gang's business dealings, and when Terry eventually wanted out, Charley was killed.

I wondered why brothers would betray each other in two very different ways that eventually led to their death. Right behind that thought, came the question of why people betray themselves only to end up in debt, pregnant, sick, or dead behind the decisions they made.

In my opinion, most of us have the same thought as Fredo and Charley before they died, "I never thought it would come to this."

For you and I it has not come to that, and that is more real than Charley and Fredo's fate. We are real, they are imagined.

Talk About It First

"To run where the brave dare not go". When I hear Roberta Flack sing those lyrics from "The Impossible Dream" I think about people like David, Harriet Tubman, Ghandi, Dr. King, and President Obama. These people had a vision of what seemed to be an impossible dream and very little means to make that dream come to fruition, but they were successful because they spoke what they dreamed into existence. If everyone in the world kept their dreams to themselves, they would all be chalked up as "weird thoughts" If the Wright brothers never told each other they wanted to put a machine in the sky that would transport people, the highways would be more packed than they already are. And there would have never been a need for those highways if Henry Ford would have listened to the people's demand for faster horses instead of automobiles.

More than ever before, our world is dependent on breakthroughs made possible by people who were once told their dreams were impossible.

If there is something you want to do, tell someone, anyone (including yourself). But you are the only person that can't tell yourself "no", because that will be the end of that dream.

PEACE.