DAVID - THE POLITICAL ACTIVIST!!

Today, SouthSTAR Services (the workshop David attends) took a group of people to downtown Chicago to protest the proposed budget cuts the state of Illinois is considering making to groups and agencies that serve the disabled.  These budget cuts are more cuts in a series of cuts over the last few years.  Services are already at very diminished levels and many agencies have not received payments from the state in several months.

Anyway, I volunteered to go downtown to help support the cause.  I brought David with me, and we enjoyed the van ride down with several other clients.  Once we got downtown, there was a group of people gathered at the State of Illinois building carrying signs and bonding over a shared concern.  Once the speakers got up, the crowd starting chanting in unison "This budget is upside down!"  Now, I'll be honest; David just sat in his wheelchair and didn't do much of anything.  I, however, got into the spirit and was chanting with everyone else!  Another speaker got up and had the crowd chanting in Spanish!

All of that to say that we become what the crowd we run with is.  I am by no means an activist.  I normally would not go anywhere and chant and yell and carry on.  It's not my natural personality.  But I was with a group of people who did, and guess what, so did I!

We have to be so careful the crowd we hang around and with whom we associate.  If we want to live lives that are clean and pure, we should have as friends people who are clean and pure.  If you never go to a bar, if you never are around people who drink, and you avoid that atmosphere, it's pretty likely you will never take a drink.  However, even the person most against drinking would probably end up drinking if they spent all their free time in a bar.

So today I've taken a look at what I want to be in this life and I've looked at the friends I have to ensure that they are what I want to be.  What do you want to be?