In one of his Grapevine newsletters, Editor John Cooney quotes Stephen Glen, an advisor on child development to several US presidents. "The thing I celebrate every morning," writes Glen, "is the incredible capacity God has given us to rise above our past...rise above our parents...rise above our teachers...rise above our environment...and create whole new worlds of opportunity and possibility in every moment of our lives.

"But to avail ourselves of this," he says, "we must come to believe three things. Otherwise, that potential remains only potential:

“First, I must discover that I'm a capable person who can think and learn and change. I don't always have to follow what others do-but I can, through the grace of God, set a new course for myself once I believe that's possible.”

“Second, I must believe that my existence counts for something...that I matter...that the life within me has some significance in the scheme of things-greater than just the daily task of surviving. The human being was created with an unquenchable quest to find significance and meaning, a purpose somewhere in life. The human being is the only creature on this planet for whom the need to be needed, the need to have a purpose in life, is greater than our will to survive. We're the only creature we know of who will become anorexic, suicidal, literally give up he will to live, if we believe our lives don't matter anywhere to anyone.”

“Third, I must believe that, although I can't always determine what happens to me in life, I can always determine how I let that affect me. And there is, in the end, much I can do through my actions, choices, prayers, commitments and faith to ultimately influence the events of my life-I am not a passive victim of fate, luck or circumstance."

I am sure that all my readers would agree with those statements. Wouldn't it be great if we all had this sort of self-esteem? And yet, sadly, it seems as if a large proportion of today's society struggles with the problem of a low self-image. Glen himself says, "The challenge we face is how to re-establish these beliefs in a generation of kids who doubt them more than any other generation in history." Dr. John Sturt, a well-known New Zealand doctor and counsellor, says that probably 80% of Kiwis have a problem in this area. A woman operator at a secular youth centre in New Plymouth tells how they have had to take down all the mirrors. She says, "People complain that kids these days won't look at them in the eye. Kids who come here can't even look at themselves in the eye."

Norman Vincent Peale, in Power of the Plus Factor, tells how he came across a tattoo studio in Kowloon in Hong Kong. In the window, among samples of words or images one could have tattooed on one's body, were the words Born to lose. Peal says:

I entered the shop in astonishment and, pointing to those words, asked the Chinese tattoo artist, "Does anyone really have that terrible phrase, Born to lose, tattooed on his body?"

He replied, "Yes, sometimes."

"But," I said, "I just can't believe that anyone in his right mind would do that."

The Chinese man simply tapped his forehead and said in broken English, "Before tattoo on body, tattoo on mind."

One French philosophy student expressed it like this:

God is dead,

Marx is dead,

And I don't feel too good myself either.