Dear Friends,
It seems to me, with the year ending it is time to look forward at the year to come. There will be economic news, tragedy will happen, terrorism will grace a few front pages and there will be happy stories, encouraging news and miracles. Next year could be the best of your life, so so, or the worst you have lived, but the possibilities are endless. If we are to gain the benefit of knowledge however, we must remember the past, so as not to relive the time we made bad decisions, but not dwell there. To get the best of what is possible we must avoid making the mistakes of the past. That is the way societies advance and not falter.
Expect good things, think good things and do good things and good things will come to you. When we do a good thing for someone else we feel better about our own lot. We are as we think, if we dwell on bad times and things, then we become mired in them and cede the ability to go on, maybe to something far better. Moreover we get what we expect. If we expect things to go wrong they often do. Possibly, do to our expectations we have a hand in them going wrong, but the same argument can be made for expecting good things too.
A smile is the best accessory anyone can wear. A smile is free to give, it carries profound weight and it improves the lot of Man. There is not one among us who is incapable of utilizing the musculature to muster a smile yet there are so few thrown around. Even if a nice smile to the delivery man doesn’t get a few cents knocked off the price, he or she might be having a bad day, because of that, someone else might get a smile, and your goodness will have cascaded.
When we see a failure of government, society and culture, is does not follow we should loose faith in our fellow man, only in those things which have failed us. People are people everyone strives to get ahead, to deny that, is to deny humanity. When people fail there is almost always a negative backlash. When an institution fails however, that institution usually offers up some scape goat. One that, to fix, will result in more power for that institution. This is the way institutions grow. They fail, get more power because of that failure, and fail again… People are not like institutions however, we pay for our mistakes, and so are more trustworthy.
Most of us just want to get along. I bet almost everyone would like to be a hero, if the opportunity is convenient, safe and public. The number who are malevolent in their hearts are few but we weigh all our fellows on that scale. Yet, common sense tells us that if people were as bad as the media makes us out, society would crumble. We are urged to trust those institutions that fail us all the time, with absolute power, while mistrusting other human beings to the point of demanding them disarmed. What we loose sight of in the culturally induced panic is what we really loose. It is by your neighbor having a gun that makes it ever so less likely that someone who is malevolent will break into your home.
Prayer is a great way to focus the mind on good and weaken evil. The Capitalist’s prayer is one that does just that:
Lord God,
I pray that somehow and in someway,
I improve the lot of all humanity,
And that my existence be a blessing on mankind forever…. Amen
In our system, where we compete to meet the needs of our fellow human beings. Those who meet others needs best can be said to have improved the lot of mankind. So we can say, in a market system, wealth goes to those who are a blessing on mankind. Wealth makes many other things possible.
A new year is an opportunity to make the future something different than what it otherwise would be. How often we are given that chance, always rejecting it to continue on a path we dislike, find repellant and lowers us. Think good thoughts, expect good things, do good things, Pray, smile, be more trusting of people and less of institutions. Don’t allow yourself to be corralled into group think that empowers the elite at our cost. Just as the carpenter uses chalk lines, to get a building straight, these are also tools, tools that each of us can use to get our own lives, and society, straight.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
