thurday meetings

So on Thursdays we have a weekly meeting for the ATI program.
It's a time to sum up the week, give authorizations for who's going home Saturday night, talk about our concerns and... vent.

We start with general points, such as " how to get our residents eat healthier?" or " how to share the chores so that the house stays clean?" sounds easy but trust me this is not.
Our objective is to help everyone take responsibilities and to have the best atmosphere in the house.
Yesterday, as every at every meeting for about a month, we all expressed concerns about one of our residents, let's call him Mike.
He's been here for about 2 months but he hates the program (in his own terms).
His behavior is the one of a teenager, well not all teens are like this, but when you picture the bad years of growing up you get something like: blame your problems on the rest of the world, expect others to serve you, think you're better, smarter (and so on), talking back when feel miserable and reluctant to everything.
I feel bad for Mike. He is sad and hurt from what happened in his life, but we cannot excuse him. Yes a program like ours would do him good, if only he would condescend to be part of it, to take it seriously.
The decision doesn't belong to me, but Mike may be dismissed. And I would agree. As much as I think he could take benefits out of this program, I cannot do it for him. And right now his attitude is jeopardizing the program for the rest of our residents. We notice a deterioration of behavior among the younger, and a bad attitude towards staff and their own changes generally speaking.
Dismissing Mike is not a hard decision to make, it's obviously the way to go.
But I still feel sorry, as if we failed somewhere. This person doesn't seem to know what it is like to have someone who loves you and cares for you, I wish we could have showed him. But what can you do when someone shut the rest of the world out..?

"See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction [...]This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life,
so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him." (Dt 19)

For a long time I couldn't understand how we are free to choose if God says " choose life!" Why couldn't I pick death? what was wrong with death?
Not that I had suicidal tendencies, but I was preoccupied with human freedom, where's the choice, where is the freedom, if someone tells you what to choose?
Now I understand better..
It's an advice :)
Why would you pick the sufferings and death when choosing life is up to you.
It's right there in front of you! Stop blaming others, stop being passive in your own life!
Freedom is not that you can choose death, freedom is that life is right here and you can go in that direction. Now when I read " Now choose life!" I read it like a desperate call from God, who can't choose for us. He can choose to share death with us, but he cannot prevent our dying.

Anyway I didn't mean to put religion in this post, but it makes sense to me. I don't want to mix too much religion with work. But in the meantime religion is waht lead me to work here...

I'll probably write more about freedom soon again though.