It is getting more difficult for this writer for this Project to write to the young about life. I am in the last stage of life where my younger person’s strategy has been reduced by the gift of extended time to considerations of morality, purpose and the ethics of truly good decisions. This is a stage everyone, old and young reading this, will hopefully eventually reach. If you haven’t reached this stage due to youth, I can assure you it is unavoidable. No matter your age, it is best to do your best to get here as soon as possible. I am not saying get old (that is one of life’s free services) as soon as possible, but, starting now, expend some of your abundant youthful energy to engage in what really matters, like honestly getting to know yourself. For the young, getting to really know yourself reduces your fear of death and tendency for distraction and for the older, the work of self knowledge prepares you for the one event you don’t have to decide; nature has decided for you. The end of life is not a good decision or a bad outcome, it simply will be.

We Americans find ourselves as individuals on an odd auction block. What really matters to us and for us is hard for us to find for we are wrapped and trapped in a cultural, political, and commercial trance where everything has standard definition and a price tag. We are being coerced to sell our talents to the highest bidder without full consideration of what the bidder is buying. This writer from the last stage wants to caution you, that ‘deep you‘ must not be for sale . Even your talents are gifts, but they are not ‘you’. You must hold back your core sense of good and vocation because they are you for whatever moral and or ethical context you are gifted to live in. In your youth you may have to take many jobs over time, but your vocation is you and yours and will be your lifetime guide for your choices of work and recreation. Right now in this avaricious contemporary culture and government, you must be careful for yourself, your friends, and your neighbors. Even your country can only reflect you, but never take over the responsibility of you. 

Modest Proposal for Good.

The political rhetoric of “greatness” is a troubled child’s accommodation and dangerous in the body of a human adult. We are living in dangerous times when even the leader of a nation can only imagine cage fighting as a sufficient symbol for Americas 250’th birthday. America is so much more than one troubled man’s sense of fun. This is not a criticism of the cage fighters of America. If you find that to be your vocation than it is. This country is what made your vocation your choice and it is the structure of the American living space which allows choosing vocation. That is what makes America great. Let us celebrate the absolute diversity of vocation working in harmony if we must celebrate this country in this troubled time. That could be very good.