Courage is what we need now
People tend to see the world in a “half-empty” way, tending to focus on the negative rather than the positive. I suppose that’s just a human nature thing and it’s not going away anytime soon. And we’ve all got good reason to feel this way right now: we’re in a political and financial malaise and if you listen to most of our major media outlets, America is “in decline” and not relevant in the 21st century, in essence “talking us out” of recovery.
Quite frankly, it’s easy to see their “point” as there are many signposts indicating decline:
- The loss of our manufacturing base, the economic engine of the 20th century;
- Pictures and video of people living out of their cars in defacto barrios after losing their homes;
- Energy and food products costs (the costs of our basic living) rising exponentially;
- Recent freefall of our financial markets;
…among other things….
I submit to you that while the threats are grave, we hold the keys to our own recovery and prosperity. That doesn’t mean it will be easy; quite the contrary, it will be hard. It will be hard to fix the problems that our parents left us with and that we ourselves helped create. It will be painful to “fix” our broken systems be they governmental, health, economic, or energy. In some cases, the broken system will not be able to fixed, it will have to be scrapped. The pain will be broad-based, but since I live in the real world, I know that some will feel the pain more than others.
But I don’t subscribe to the theory that our problems are insurmountable. I’m not willing to give up that ghost yet. It’s true that we as a society will be forced to change, and it will change. Our economy will change. Our government will change.
To turn a phrase from a well-known song, what the world needs now is not love, it’s courage. Courage to make the hard decisions about what we want our future to look like and then the courage to face the trials and consequences of our decisions. Indecision is not an option, as there are grave consequences for indecision.
Perhaps most of all, our expectations will need to change. The general sense of “entitlement” we exude must (and will) erode. We are not “entitled” to anything in this world, except for those rights prior generations fought overwhelming tyrannical forces for. Those same rights, quite frankly, we have begun to take for granted.
I’m sure it’s been a long time (or maybe the first time), so go read our Bill of Rights and thank a vet.