The Goal in 96 Seconds

Cahoots, and other places

Back to work after a few days with good friends in a distant, quiet place.  Peaceful, but too brief.

Conformed

Or not, perhaps.  

We've been carried along for quite a distance. Any chance of recovery?

Choosing to go counter-common is high-risk and a guarantee of difficulty.  Should we even make the attempt?

None of us are normal, centered, or balanced in our understanding. Each is bent by culture and circumstance, by self and others, even after a lifetime of thoughtful growth and refined thinking.

The very best we might hope for is continued instruction and breaking change where we're the part that gets broken.  How many things could be profitably broken out of our thinking?

• self things that shouldn't come first
• status things that shouldn't matter
• winning ... when coming alongside is the better choice
• judging ... when understanding might make a difference
• looking down on others as though we were above, somehow
• reaching for more ... when giving would be so much better

Even at our best, we don't get it right every time.  Each still has room for more change, and getting it right, even just occasionally, is such a joy.

Preaching to myself again.

Short attention span

Competition for our attention often leaves us with information overload.

How do we solve the problem?         

There are things that deserve more thought than others, we know.  Our environment can pile on distractions, however, from short story sequences on the news to interruptions on top of interruptions at school or the office.

Have you noticed?

Advertisers don't do long commercials any more.  Now you get five or ten commercials in what used to be a short break with just one.


If you're still reading this and haven't wandered off, you're unusually focused.

Does such a torrent of distraction and information derail our lives?  Of course it does.  Much like interrupting a language course interferes with our desired mastery, our cultural norm of continual subject change interrupts the productivity of a dedicated life. Chances are, years may pass with little progress where it's needed.  (This is an actual simulation of the modern distraction model.)

Change the outcome.  Know your goals, invest significantly and practically in the values you've chosen.  Deliberately get up and do instead of sitting and talking.  And forgetting.

  Schedule it and follow through.

We have to fight a bit to get above the distraction, don't we.


(He said, preaching yet again to himself)

A world without fashion

Imagine life with just two kinds of clothes, work and play.  Two pairs of shoes, two belts, maybe two kinds of socks ... kind of like when we were children.

Everyone could wear pretty much the same kinds of clothes for work and travel and socializing regardless of the occasion.  It could be really simple and much less troublesome.

Early feminists spoke against the fashion culture. “It was associated with triviality, and blamed for confining women to frilly subjects instead of loftier matters. An interest in fashion was perceived as pandering to the male gaze.”

Women are still criticized for the time they spend on fashion and wardrobe.  It's suggested that women would come into their own in society if they quit focusing on being attractive.  Studies reveal that some women do indeed spend much of each day deciding what to wear and thinking wishfully about the couture they might accumulate.  Some women, but not all.

Why would a woman force herself to endure high-heeled shoes? Painful, harmful, and expensive, they deform the bone structure over time, yet she chooses to play the game.  And why would she allow a size zero model on the runway to set the standard for her own self image?  Is it just women?

Of course not. Men are aware of such things but perhaps they respond in more subtle ways.  'Dress for success' has its own set of rules from cuff and collar to manicure and accessory brand.

On the up-side, a portion of the adult population gives but little attention to fashion and style issues.  Their lives are full enough of things that actually deserve their attention. Somewhere along the way, they realized that their clothing had absolutely nothing to do with their worth or their benefit to others.

A successful businesswoman explained her choice of apparel as, "It needs only to not distract."  Another said a bit more firmly, "If they need me to dress to impress them, they don't get my attention."

A world without fashion ... "Would you find it liberating? Finally - never having to wonder what to wear because no one will care. People would see you for the person that you are and not dismiss you because they didn't like your shoes." 

An interesting note; we respect and admire people for their skill, their intellect, their courage and grace, their willingness and ability to serve. We don't admire them for their appearance.  At most, we're entertained or perhaps envious, but there's neither respect nor admiration involved.

We shouldn't expect the fashion/advertising industry to help us or our children think clearly or live a worthwhile life.  It should receive but little attention and no respect at all.  

From another perspective, the way we dress is a form

of nonverbal communication. We choose a particular message

we intend to convey, perhaps. But that's another subject entirely.

Scream

Many of us have yelled at our child.  Or partner.   We can say we haven't, perhaps, because our memory of it is only that we spoke with controlled force, with repressed anger.  The truth, however, is that the damage is done unless it's caught and corrected quickly.

Yelling and finger pointing -- all it conveys is an attempt to subordinate and reshape another, to put them in their place and force them to behave as though they submit to us.  That's all.  That's all the information and memory carried away from the encounter.  Whatever the issue was that triggered the encounter remains unaddressed and unresolved.

UNADDRESSED AND UNRESOLVED

Issues around which such tension might commonly rise include finance, schedule, and the kids.  It can spread to expectations, chores, to-do lists, promises made and forgotten, ad infinitum.  The common element in all is your anger.

There are some words that should never be spoken in anger, of course.  Beyond that simple constraint, there are also some things that should never be done.  Screaming at another in anger and perhaps frustration is equally if not more significant.  It conveys the willingness to do harm, to injure.

Escalation -- conversations and confrontations begin and ramp up.  That's the failure point.  Early on, the participants begin to add volume, facial expression, and gesture.  At this point, the relationship begins to weaken, to fracture.  And our target is wounded, much like in a fist fight.

If we immediately stop and apologize, genuinely confessing our error, we may be able to undo the harm.

If not, we build a wall behind which our target barricades their heart and soul.

We all have difficulty admitting our wrong thinking and actions, of course.  If there are issues, they should be resolved.  Confrontation is occasionally necessary whether problems are moral, ethical, or preferential.  It should in every case be gracious, bi-directionally open and informative, and reasonable.

And remember, the kids see and hear everything.  They read our non-verbal expression and body language as well.  That's how they learn.

Finding Purpose

Here's an enjoyable look at life and purpose that actually makes some practical sense.  If you have the luxury of choices along the way, here's what it might look like.

Some hard questions.
Am I doing what in my heart I love?
If not, am I close?  Are adjustments available?
Time for some changes?
Short term and long term, do I see some goals?

Thanks and a hat tip to Kenny Smith for pointing this one out.  He's a farmer/rancher sort of fellow.

Recent History, Bill Moyers

For a little perspective on how we've changed as a culture, this narrative reaches back to the early 20th century in the South when memories of the Civil War still touched the thinking of folks. Marshall, Texas, is home to Wiley College, a centerpiece in the Civil Rights Movement.

Transcript:

Hobart Key: I’ve often thought, you know, that I was lookin’ backwards through rose-colored glasses. But for good luck, when I was little, I kept a sort of a diary for part of it… and I …and I look back at that diary and the writing’s not too good, but it says just what I’m saying now …..

Bill Moyers:… in those days …

The Realization

The day comes for all of us when we realize ... we were wrong and we'd known it all along.  We'd always suspected there was something more, but we hoped it wouldn't be devastatingly bad.

So this precious young lady was making her way through the last weeks before giving birth to her first child.  She chatted with her baby there inside her and sang songs for both their sake.  It was a little scary for her and she worried sometimes about what her baby was going through.  The days passed, and her anticipation soared -- she found herself falling in love with the child she had yet to meet face to face.  When the day came, suddenly she was a mother with a newborn in her arms, and the love that had been stirring in her poured out like a river; she'd had no idea how deeply in love she was with this little person, this tiny center of her universe.  She was forever changed, irretrievably redefined by the life she'd brought into the world.

She bore two more children before ... 

Cecile Richards tells of her own abortion, “It was a decision my husband and I made. It was a personal decision. And we have three children that we adore and that are the center of my life. And we decided that was as big as our family needed to be. That was really the story. It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that." 

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards was asked, "When does life start? When does a human being become a human being?"

Richards replied, "Every woman has to make her own decision." 

Pressed again to say when she thinks life begins, she said, "I'm a mother of three children. For me, life began when I delivered them. They've probably been the most important thing in my life ever since. But that's my own personal decision, right?"

That's an interesting question. Does my preference determine when my child's life begins?

I don't think CEO Richards was completely truthful. I don't think she watched her belly in the weeks before delivery and thought of anything other than her living babies. As wiggling and heartbeat and hiccups and response to her voice were all obvious, she thought of her babies and called them by name. I suspect she knew the truth but for political reasons, she said otherwise. 

This is a troublesome and confused world.  

Elizabeth the Great

As I walked towards the schoolyard, I heard the crowd yelling.
“Go home! You do not belong here,” one woman yelled. The other
said with a furious face, “Do you want to get lynched? Burned?”

They told us to go home and get out of here, or get lynched. They
saw me and started chasing me. There was no room for me to
escape. I was surrounded. I was hit on the head by several
bottles and even rocks. I was so terrified I can’t talk. My
lips just froze and my eyes set to look straightforward. I was
unable to cry, unable to scream, and I regret my decision to
go to school. Never before I felt fear at this level.

Suddenly out of the blue, a nice old white woman came out
of the crowd. She held my hand and calms me down, whispering.
“Its okay darling, don’t be afraid. Lets try to walk towards the bus
stop right by the soccer field, and I’ll bring you home”

I skipped school for days.
I was traumatized and haunted by nightmares. ...
One day, an agent from the US marshal came to my house.  ...
They took me to school in their black cars, followed by several
 military jeeps with canons on the roof. For once, I felt safe.
 I was sure I’m going to school from that day onwards.

Elizabeth was met by an angry mob on her way to school.  It was 58 years ago today in 1957. Elizabeth Eckford was just 15 years old. 

Our Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was unconstitutional, but it was not a popular decision in southern states.  Elizabeth Eckford and eight other teenagers were the Little Rock Nine. They were to be the first black students to attend Little Rock Central High School after the court ruling.  Vicious opponents gathered at the school to challenge them and their decision.

The plan was for the nine students to enter the school together, but the meeting place was changed the night before and Eckford didn't get word of the change.  She arrived alone and was met by 400 angry white folks shouting threats and insults.  

The governor, Orval Faubus whom some of us remember with chagrin, had deployed the Arkansas National Guard around the school to keep the black students out.

Faced with armed soldiers and threats from the crowd, Eckford ran from the school grounds in tears.   So much for day one.

The city's Mayor, Woodrow Wilson Mann, asked President Eisenhower for federal troops to step in.  Eisenhower sent the Army 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock and took command of the Arkansas National Guard.  With the governor stymied for the moment, the Little Rock Nine started school at the end of September. Soldiers were deployed at the school for the entire year, yet many of the students were abused, including Eckford who at one point was pushed down the stairs.

Governor Faubus continued to fight integration.  The following year, he ordered Little Rock’s four high schools closed rather than allow it to continue. As a result, Eckford did not graduate from Central High but took correspondence courses to complete her requirements. She went on to college and received a BA in history from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.

At just fifteen years old, Elizabeth and the others did their part to change things.  They did what was right, it had a price tag, and it wasn't over quickly.  Being the target of hate and malicious intent is devastating, and more so when you're a child and you're aggressively attacked by adults.  With extraordinary courage rarely seen at any age, young Elizabeth did her part for what was right.

On my short list of heroes, Elizabeth Eckford.

Also on the short list, Ruby and her family.

Three years later, Ruby Bridges fought the same battle in New Orleans.  Ruby’s family made the decision to stand up for their rights and enrolled Ruby into the first grade at an all white school. She would be the only black child there.  

Ruby arrived for her first day of school in the escort of four U.S federal marshals and to a threatening crowd of angry parents and teenagers. Ruby remembers thinking the crowd must have been for Mardi Gras. Furious parents took their children out of school claiming that they would not return until Ruby had left. It was a promise they kept. For that academic year, the school taught only five students, Ruby and four white kids.  Ruby was only 6 years old.

Imagine, if you will, the effect of such prejudice on both black and white children.   What might be happening in the mind of one of those little first graders whose parents, spewing their ignorance and bigotry, snatched them out of school.

Apparently, not every battle is for old warriors.

Today, economic inequality and unaddressed system failures are returning America's schools to virtually the same segregation we fought so hard to change.  Should the issue again be a priority?  Is the same courage still required?

Life, Abortion, and Conscience

How does one face the issues objectively?

• 2014: Half of pregnancies among American
women are unintended, and four in 10 of 
these are terminated by abortion.[1]

• The U.S. unintended pregnancy rate is
 significantly higher than the
 rate in many developed
 countries.[2]

• The reasons women give for choosing abortion 
underscore their understanding of the responsibilities
of parenting and family life. Three-fourths cite concern for
or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they
cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby
would interfere with work, school or the ability to care
for dependents; half say they do not want to be a
single parent or are having problems with their
 husband or partner.[3]

An unplanned pregnancy is not a minor event.  It's a life changer. Choices available can challenge both our conscience and our ability to walk them through.

In the news, we see the industry that removes a developed fetus and disassembles it for the sale of individual organs and tissue samples.

Planned Parenthood explains on their website, "...you may also need a shot through your abdomen to make sure that the fetus's heart stops before the procedure begins."  See more here.

Ultrasound technology now gives us a better view of the unborn child, and the visual impact is significant.

So where can we find an objective position that's consistent with conscience?

In a perfect world perhaps, every unintended pregnancy would be prevented. The world isn't perfect, though, and hundreds of thousands every year have to face the reality.  Is abortion a choice I can make in good conscience?

• What about when birth control failed?
• What about a forced or coerced impregnation?
• What about a problem that threatens the mother's health or life?
• What about an underaged victim?
• What about a life that is totally unprepared for a child?
• What about a single mom who just can't afford another child?
• Is it different if the baby has a significant health problem?
• Is it different if pregnancy is just a few days or weeks along?
• Is there a difference between the first weeks and the last weeks of a pregnancy?

The difficult choice is often faced by women and girls who've perhaps had little opportunity to see life beyond their microcosm, who've been coached by equally uninformed friends, or who only have access to a way out rather than a way forward.

• Medication abortion accounted 36% of abortions

 before nine weeks’ gestation, in 2011.[5]

Far be it from me to judge the conscience or decision of another. Often, I suspect, they're hard-pressed by difficult circumstances with no good options in sight.  That's their reality.  Some have alternatives for real help like CareNet in southern Maryland.

Planned Parenthood, however, is a separate issue.  As a corporate entity, they've taken the position that abortion is the solution.  It accounts for about half of their clinic income, not the 3% they claim. Their business model preferentially provides termination for their pregnant client with virtually no attention to healthy alternatives that exist.  The organization is openly hostile to those who would offer help that didn't include abortion as the preferred end.

Recent news shows PP staff and management as they deal with the business of abortion and disposal of the remains. Publically, they discuss 'fetal tissue', but the reality is troubling if you look further. There is in fact a market for hearts, lungs, brains, various glands and tissue from well developed fetuses,  We call them fetuses because it would be troublesome if we called them children.

A six-week embryo

At what point is that transition identifiable? From fetus to child; ovum and sperm, fertilized ovum, embryo, implantation in the womb, first movement, and later, viability.  At some point, we have a child in the equation.

Amelia was born at 23 weeks

and a few days.  Her twin brother

was born 10 days later.  PPHood 

would routinely abort such a child

and sell her remains.

The result of the political and ideological battle is that our culture now allows the termination of pregnancy as a convenience for any reason.  The argument for choice is largely based on misrepresentation of both the act and the meaning.   It's rather large and divisive.

The questions continue.

Trickle Up

In past centuries, we called it 'divine right'.  Today, it's 'trickle down', the obvious rightness of the rich living at the top of the nation's immense economy and at the expense of a workforce that gets the leftovers.

Equal opportunity suggests that anyone can rise on their own efforts. We have so many stories of folks who began with a good idea and hard work, and made their way to success.  Supposedly, anybody can do it in America, the land of opportunity.  That's not today's reality.

The capitalist process of competition and a free market may actually shed a portion of the population from the bottom of the model.  Those who miss out on education and a safe childhood are the usual victims.  That isn't the path they would have chosen.

Poverty is not a choice.  No one chooses to be poor, to be unable to feed their children or to afford a home in a safe neighborhood.  No one chooses for their children to grow up with crime and drugs and violence on the street where they live.  It's done to them by a series of social structures and mechanisms.

Escape from poverty for you and your family  requires an opportunity context.  There has to be a place, schools, employment, adequate income for living, and a safe community for your kids.  The notable individuals who've made it out of poverty and achieved significant success had help along the way.  Without help, there's little chance of success for anyone.

Here's the challenge for Republicans and Democrats alike.  

The poverty numbers are not the measure of our health.  
The relevant metric is economic inequality.
The GAP between rich and poor has widened in recent decades, and it continues to do so.

All but the top 20% have lost ground, and the bottom 60% has effectively been left behind.

Consider the impact that might have on most of the population.

----------

Trickle Up!  Among the more grotesque examples of what actually happens is the Walton family.

Mom and Dad Walton did well with putting Walmart on the map.  They built the company, enjoyed the success of their efforts, and gave about $5B to charitable work.

The second generation Walton heirs, worth about $148B, have given 0.04% of their income to charity.  When compared to Buffet and Gates (who've given 27% and 36%, respectively, according to Forbes), the Waltons are oddly ... stingy, selfish, what?

The heirs own about 50% of the corporation and will receive about $3.21B in dividends this year, yet their employees are rather poorly treated.  A single mom working at Walmart is likely to be below the national poverty level and eligible for food stamps.

Since Walmart and the Waltons have refused to budge on wages, you and I pick up the tab.  Our taxes subsidize Walmart's operating expenses.  Walmart has been under scrutiny lately for costing taxpayers $6+ billion a year in social assistance because of low wages and the artificially limited hours they give employees.

“A single Walmart Supercenter costs area taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year," according to The Americans for Tax Fairness. (That's $3000 to $5,800 on average for each of 300 workers).”  

Most Walmart workers can only dream of making $25,000 in a year. Meanwhile, the Waltons get $25,000 per minute from their Walmart dividends.

That's how trickle-up works.  Corporations and the top level wealthy individuals extract extraordinary wealth from both their employees and their community.  The gap widens, mobility decreases, poverty and crime increase along with social unrest.  It has happened before.

The U.S. economy is one of the most unequal in the developed world.  Do your own inquiry, then perhaps make sure your representatives are aware of your concern.

Great Questions

Curious where your life is headed?  Or why?

The right question might provide a clue.

1. When it’s all said and done, will I have said more than I’ve done? (Ouch!)
2. What is the one thing I’d most like to change about the world?
3. To what degree have I actually controlled the course my life has taken?
4. Five years from now, will I remember what I did yesterday?  Or the day before that?

Imagine a person trying to use a straw hat as a cooking pot.  Now imagine a person using up years of their life before finding its purpose.  Perhaps until we know what our lives are for, we are like that hat on the fire.  We can use up our days without any particular purpose.  Just passing the time.

It's easy to shrug off the idea of purpose and say that life is just natural, that the survival rules are all there is, and there's no real purpose beyond that.

If that were true, though, much would remain without explanation.  Great music, grand art, noble service, and unselfish love, all have nothing to do with survival.  They are inexplicable from that starting point.  If the 'natural' model is true, such things are insanity, dysfunctional behaviors.

Imagine the whole of humanity as a consistent model of natural selection.  Famous competitors for survival like Hitler and Stalin are understandable, striving for power, for the top rung at the expense of others.  History's great industrialists are similarly appropriate in that category, pursuing wealth and advantage much like today's financial industry moguls.  And winning is everything.  Parents raising their children are a nicer illustration, of course.

Supply, demand, food, arable land, energy, clean water, politics, and growing inequality all illustrate and confirm the natural competitive processes.

My atheist friends are big on 'life

without purpose'.  It's been an

interesting discussion over

the years.

But then there are those who just don't fit.  The ones who care for the poor, who feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, the ones who share what they have so that others might have hope.  In the evolutionary model of competition, there's no explanation for such behavior.  Caring for the oppressed and disadvantaged is the opposite of what the model allows.  The ones who fall ill or into poverty, they aren't among the 'fittest' who should survive, at least according to the science.

Philosophers who conjecture about free will provide the most convoluted reasons for why someone would unselfishly care about another or if it were even possible. They struggle with such things much like the natural science purists.  For them all, it appears, one cannot give unselfishly, give from a good heart, or genuinely care for the good of another outside the context of survival, self-benefit, and self-perpetuation.

To suggest that life has no meaning beyond the natural goes against the evidence we see around us daily and in ourselves as well.  So much of what we admire and strive for is 'unnatural', if you will.  It reaches beyond 'natural' to ... what?  A higher truth, a spiritual realm beyond just surviving?  Of course.

Fuji at night with lights

Ever notice that the most significant times in life, the ones that last in our memories, are found in healthy relationship to others?  Making a  difference, being a helpful contributor to the life of another is the most fun anyone can have.  It ranks above wealth or physical accomplishments like skydiving or climbing Mt. Fuji.  (Ask M; she's done that.)  And when examined, it is decidedly not 'natural'.

“The marketplace is full of materials designed to meet every circumstance in life.  Except the spiritual.  But, ironically enough, it's the spiritual ones that pursue us even when we don't pursue them.  It's the spiritual ones that plague us for answers even in the midst of plenty.  The fact is that people are far more interested in the great questions of life than they are in the small ones about making a living." ~ Joan Chittister

If it was easy...

It's not easy, but these are common human values.  Across cultural and ethnic lines, these are recognized and affirmed.

Equally common are selfishness, greed, envy, arrogance, and immorality.  The noble exist alongside the baser ways, all in the mind of each individual.

A friend lamenting her way through psychology 101 gives us the following summary ...

Social Cognitive Theory - applied to the behavior of enjoying tomatoes

• Observational Learning - I see people enjoy tomatoes
• Reproduction - I can eat them and if I do I can eat something else
• Self-efficacy - I will try them more often
• Emotional coping - Chanting the mantra "positive thoughts" while eating tomatoes
• Self-regulatory capability - I can choose to eat the tomatoes or I can choose not to.
• Cognitive Dissonance -- Although I want to eat tomatoes because I know they are good for me, SCREW TOMATOES!

Perhaps we live with a continual cognitive dissonance like she describes, that internal conflict of good vs. not-so-good in our own thinking. It sure seems that way.

Walking along the good path is a choice, but more accurately, it's perhaps continual choices, a prolonged war, and no one wins every engagement.

The 'good news', however; there is indeed a path.
A sense of humor helps, I suspect, when it comes to things like tomatoes and whatever.  Those of us who eat tomatoes are probably better people.

No tears in Zimbabwe for Cecil

The death of Cecil the lion has been covered from perhaps every angle except the one that matters most.  
How do the locals feel about lions?

Goodwell Nzou tells us, "In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.

When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.

A week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an injured leg.  The lion sucked the life out of the village.  No one socialized by fires at night, no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s homestead.

When the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed legally.  We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast and our escape from serious harm.
...
We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.

Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States.  Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.

And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger."

~Goodwell Nzou is a doctoral student in molecular and cellular biosciences at Wake Forest University.

The BBC's Farai Sevenzo reports: "The lion's death has not registered much with the locals"

Perhaps Goodwell Nzou and others with such relevant insight should be the ones interviewed by CNN and the rest of the media.

Zimbabwe is a volatile environment fraught with corruption, oppression, and abuse of human rights.
The economy is in free fall. In the two years before September 2015, no less than 650 000 workers have lost their jobs.  In the same period, about 9 000 companies have either collapsed or gone into voluntary liquidation, and at least nine financial institutions have closed. The government will have to import at least 800 000 metric tonnes of maize within the next few months if Zimbabwe is to avert the impending humanitarian catastrophe; particularly in the southern provinces.  Cecil and the protestors are the only reference to Zimbabwe in the major U.S. media recently.

Obligation or Privilege

If your little girl cried out to you for help, would you respond?

From the house, you hear her out in the yard, scared and calling for you.
Nothing would be more important than responding to that cry.

• You wouldn't stop to check the list of chores she was supposed to do to make sure she'd done them all.  

• You wouldn't hesitate, even it she was in the middle of doing something you'd told her not to do.  

She's yours, and your love isn't dependent on whether or not she's perfect.  She can come to you anytime she wants to. She can ask you a million questions, she can complain and argue and disagree, she can push against the boundaries, and she's still yours.  Always will be.

Consider then the Father of us all.  A religious mind is perhaps overly full of rules, of requirements to be met, those things which we are obliged to do in order to qualify for attention.  Prayer might be on such a list of obligations, but then we doubt our prayers will be heard, perhaps because we see our own imperfection.  We don't deserve His attention.  That part is true.  His love for us isn't there because we deserve it.

As a father, my love for my daughter isn't there because she qualified for it through some performance checklist.  It's because she's my child, a precious part of my own life whom I love without reservations.  The fact that she has done so many things incredibly well brings joy and pleasure, but the love was there all along.

I wonder sometimes if we might doubt our prayers are heard because we're disappointed in ourselves today and figure He is too.  That's not how it works, we're told.  He hears every prayer; it's a privilege He gives us all.  Even when we're not at our best.

Social Security - Entitlement or Welfare

From a recent Op-ed:  Social Security is not an entitlement!  
Actually it is, but don't misunderstand.  Strong words circle the issue of social security as an undeserved government handout.  Republican leadership favors raising the age of eligibility and reducing benefits. Democratic policymakers neglect the fact that social security is not federally funded but is paid for by employers and employees.  From the taxpayer's perspective, once you're eligible, your benefit is generally based on how much you and your employer have paid into the program.  The longer you work and the more you pay in, the bigger your monthly check.

SS is not an impressive return on investment when compared to other options, but it is somewhat secure. And mandatory. The government takes money which we should be saving for the future, and they've implied they'll give it back when we need it, more or less.  It doesn't actually work that way, but that's the idea.

That said, social security is in fact an entitlement, and the problem is word usage.  Social Security is an entitlement in the literal and legal sense of the term. Social Security is Title II of the Social Security Act, and other programs (like Medicare) make up the other titles of the law. So that's where the root word "title" comes from.  It's perhaps much like my home to which I hold title and for which I pay taxes, etc.

Once you meet all the qualifications for Social Security benefits (work credits, age, etc.) then you are eligible. When you apply and get approved, you are legally entitled to those benefits.

Over decades of employment and subsequent retirement, our SS payments return perhaps the equivalent of a good savings account.  Not impressive, but more secure than the marketplace.  Had the mandatory amount instead been used to purchase CDs or savings bonds, the return would be somewhat higher.

It is, however, a paid-for benefit.   Most would gladly take a lump-sum return of payments plus interest.

Note the GOP (big business) offered solution moves everyone to the 401-k world, leaves the risk in the hands of the corporate world, and removes the employer's contribution.  It's a simple but troubling solution that offers little in the way of 'security'.

F's and G's

Bear Grylls tells of his father's advice to him as a young man, "Follow the three F's and watch out for the three G's."

And those three F's are...

• Family,
• Faith, and 
• Follow your dreams.

And watch out for the three G's...

• Gold,
• Glory, and
• Girls.

Not that there's anything wrong with them, but ya gotta be careful when you're a young fellow.

Some of the things he eats are

rather strange.

Not bad advice for a young man looking to lay out his path ahead; not bad at all.

Bear and Barack in Alaska

He's an interesting fellow, rather clear thinking and focused in life.  His sister gave him the nickname 'bear' when he was a week old.  A serious minded Christian, he's involved in charities, writes books, does adventures and drags others along with him.