The Risk of Living

Photo: Mr. Dickie (Jim Henson Memorial at the University of Maryland)

One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying. (Morris West in Thinking Outside the Church by Jennifer Leigh Selig, p. 235)

Knowing that it usually takes some time to get oneself into a mess we also realize that once "in" it will take sometime to "get out" of the mess. This morning I'm thinking about this fact of life as every citizen of this country contemplates "the mess" that our government and business leaders have made of this country. Because of their failure to "take care of business" now business is going to take care of us and not in a good way.

Isn't it interesting that lawmakers are always telling us they need more money to govern and yet now they are able, in a matter of days, to come up with trillions of dollars to throw at a plan that they've worked on for only a few days, that hasn't been discussed in public and that hasn't been presented to the Congress or the American people. Where did all of this money come from?

Have you considered that the same men who are developing the plan are the power brokers of Wall Street and Washington who got us into this mess in the first place. Most of them aren't even our elected leaders, with the possible exception of the president, and from all appearances, he is as usual, "out of the loop."

Is there anything in this situation that should make us optimistic about our future?

Mr. Dickie