"TOPS" Secret

Every young kid at some time or another has imagined being part of some secret organization. Most of us have heard of such secret societies as the "Knights Templar" or the "Masons", and whose presence came to the forefront from the book "The Da Vinci Code" or in the movie "National Treasure". Not all of those societies were quite so secretive, however, but they could be particularly if you had some imaginative young children around. My Mother was a member of one of those secret societies, "TOPS", and they met weekly, so of course, you know that it was extremely important.

My mother met with her fellow secret societal members, sometimes at a public function hall or in one of the local churches. The meetings were not unusually long, and by holding them at these conspicuous locations, few people suspected the covert operations going on inside. The members would "weigh" in and then exchange information amongst themselves, but you had to be a member to get in on the discussions. It had all the earmarks of a secret group, wouldn't you agree? Occasionally, my brothers and I would be in toe, and this too provided an excellent smoke screen to the casual observer. It served to "reduce" any suspicions that something important was "going down" as some of the community's more prominent citizens were filing in and out of those meetings.

As I got older, I realized that those TOP secret meetings were not about what my imagination had led me to believe, but about something entirely different. In fact, they weren't even covert but more about creating "converts" to changing a lifestyle and helping people feel better about themselves. From my perspective, there is nothing that should remain "TOP Secret" about it. Once one recognizes the formula for true happiness, it sure "takes the weight off" the shoulders, and that's the message that should never be lost!