Every profession can bring out the best in you or the worst in you.

A policeman can over the course of his career develop an ever stronger urge to protect the weak and to prevent the unjust victimization of the innocent. Or he can nurture hatred and suspicion in his heart, and actively seek the demonization and destruction of those that fit certain stereotypes. And whenever a policeman passes by you and you look deep into each other’s eyes, you know which off the two he or she has become.

A politician can be or become a selfless servant or a selfish manipulator.

A teacher can become ever more patient with the slow-at-learning and develop an ever greater capacity and urge to accommodate and further each and every student. Or he can become one of those teachers who focus on and take delight only in the bright students, and say to the Slow students: “Nothing good will ever come of you in life.”

A teacher can also, over time, grow more fascinated and convinced of the unique miracle in each child, and try to patiently seek out, recognize and nurture whatever special flower is waiting to blossom in each young soul. Or she can become impatient, self-centered and self-absorbed, and seek to impose a one-size-fits-all grooming and goal on all students.

A teacher can become a fair defender of humanity who sees all children as God’s creatures. Or a teacher can become a biased agent of a one-sided ideology that favors some children and disadvantages others on grounds of origin or appearance.

A teacher can become an even more avid learner than his students. Or he can stop learning altogether, because he knows it all.

And so it is with all professions, situations, and life.

Events do not shape people. Professions do not shape people. They only offer options for development. The Free Will of each individual alone it is that determines if and in what way each individual will be shaped.

At some point, we have to accept responsibility for who and what and how we are. Like spring that dawns anew every year, every human personality feels an impetus once in a while, over the course of an earth life, to re-examine themselves and their character, to re-appraise how they look at life and how they react to life; to make a fresh new decision about what kind of person they want to be.

When you look into the past and remember all the forces that have shaped you…; When you look around you and consider all the forces pressuring you and moulding you…; When you look into the future and imagine all the forces that will happen upon and hit you…; – do not forget to also include one special force in the list of all those forces that shape your spiritual destiny; the one force that will always be with you: YOUR OWN FREE WILL.

It is the strongest power of all in the determination of what kind of Human Being you become.

Don’t blame your parents forever.
Don’t blame your teachers forever.
Don’t blame your country forever.
Don’t blame your culture and tradition forever.
Don’t blame your religion forever.
Don’t blame your employers forever.
Don’t blame Injustice and Unfairness forever.
Don’t blame your physical body forever.
You will blame them for a while, I know. We all do. We are human, and we need time to heal.
But don’t blame them forever.

In you is the power and the force to birth a new you. It is your FREE WILL. Don’t be deceived by the simplicity of that thought. It is really true. You are the reincarnation, the result and the resolution… of yourself. You are a Jedi – and the Force is already with you.

Use it.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.