I’m sitting in a bar feeling shitty about my life. I have an average job. I have an average looking wife and average kids. I’m feeling shitty about myself as well. I have accomplished nothing beyond average in my entire life. I had once thought I was destined for greatness. I dreamed that one day I would have the best-looking wife on the block and make more money than I could count. None of my dreams have come to pass and I am now sitting here in this average bar nursing a cheap drink and wondering where I took the wrong turn.
Suddenly, the bar room door opens and in walks this seedy looking bum. You know the type. Long stringy hair, dirty clothes, smelly and unkempt. He has probably not bathed in a month. I hope he will not come and sit down next to me. I know he will try to bum a drink. If he does, I will tell him to go to hell. I am not in the mood to shell out good money for some alcoholic bum.
Sure enough, he sits down next to me. I give him the evil eye and he moves on down to the two guys sitting at the other end of the bar. I watch some give and take between the bum and the other two drinkers. They are shaking their heads and I assume telling him to get lost. He walks back over to where I am sitting and takes a seat.
“Hey mister, can you buy me a drink.” “Get lost”, I say, “I’m not a charity for bar bums.” “How about some compassion for someone’s who’s down on their luck.” “You want compassion” I reply, “go visit a priest.”
“What if I could tell you a story that would profoundly change your life” says the bum. “Would that change your mind?” “Tell you what” I say, “you tell me the story and if it profoundly changes my life, I’ll buy you a drink.” I expect this will get rid of the bum but instead he agrees to my terms. “Deal” he intones in a low soft voice.
“My name is Mike. Twenty years ago, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in law. I had the highest GPA average in my graduation class. At least five major law firms in Boston attempted to recruit me. I took the one that offered me the most money. I received a high six-digit salary.
I bought five of the best suits I could find. I purchased a Porsche Carrera GT and a penthouse with a view of the Boston harbor.
I was assigned easy cases at first. We represented the big corporations in their lawsuits. Most of these were by disgruntled employees, whistle blowers and private citizens. I killed each of them. I was assigned bigger and bigger cases. The amounts contested often ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of the cases involved issues of sexual harassment, environmental degradation and fraud. I never lost a case. My corporate clients were ecstatic. I was the go to guy for any high profile big buck lawsuit in the nation.
My life was a dream. I made more and more money. My salary was now in the seven digits with my bonuses and gratuities from my clients. I was invited to celebrity parties and the super exclusive country clubs of the rich.
I was tall dark and handsome. I worked out six days a week in the gym and I had a body that was the envy of any guy in the firm. The woman all drooled when I walked by. I bought a bigger penthouse and added a Ferrari 458 Spider to my car collection. The car was given to me by a grateful client.
One day at the office, the firm’s owner and founder introduced me to his daughter Ashley. She was a knockout. She was a former Miss College USA. She was tall blonde and statuesque. She had the face of any angel. Sadly, she did not have the brains to match her looks.
I was polite to her but made no obvious overtures to show that I was interested. She did not really care as just about every other male and even some female lawyers were thinking about how to get in bed with her. I decided to pretend to ignore her.
We had a Christmas party at the firm later that year. It was held at the Boston Harbor Hotel. I saw Ashley and she was surrounded by a bunch of our lawyers each trying to impress her. I decided this was a good time to throw my hat in the ring. I joined the conversation and soon showed how stupid most of my competition was. Each one in turn drifted away so that only Ashley and I were left talking. I went to the bar and returned with another drink for Ashley and myself. We talked for another half hour or so and I made my move.
I invited Ashley up to my penthouse for a night cap. In no time at all, she was in my bed. I am not bragging when I say that not only did we go at it all night, but I called in to cancel appointments the next day and we spent the entire next day in bed going at it like deprived bunny rabbits.
As I said before, she was not the brightest light bulb in the pack but I figured where I was going, it would be good to have a looker like her as my wife. A few months later in what was one of the Boston social events of the year we were married. We moved into a new house in Back Bay.
I eventually left the law firm and started my own firm. Some of the old firm’s clients went with me and I was now making more money than ever. I worked seven days and week. I was busy many evenings and did not bother coming home. I bought a penthouse near my new office in Boston and brought my mistresses up there whenever I had an overnight. I had hired several very good-looking paralegals to work for me and some of them were more than happy to help keep me warm at night.
Ashley started talking about having children and how she wished I could do more things with her. I had no intention of doing either. Why spoil a good thing?
A few more months went by and one day I decided to come home from work early. As I entered my house, I heard screams coming from upstairs. I went to a desk and grabbed a loaded Colt Commander 45 ACP that I kept ready for emergencies. I feared that Ashley was being attacked by some unknown intruder. I ran up the stairs and into our bedroom. There on the bed was Ashley and one of the young lawyers from my old law firm. They were both nude and she was on top of him riding him like a bucking bronco. What I thought were screams of pain were screams of ecstasy. I had never heard anything like that from Ashley during our entire marriage.
She turned to look at me but did not break a beat in her rhythm. The only thing she said was “Get out. I want a divorce.” I vacillated between shooting one or both of them but decided that my better course of action was to leave. On the way out, I heard her say very loudly “Take off that damn condom, I want you to come inside of me.”
I packed some stuff and moved into my penthouse apartment. I really did not give a damn if she left me. At the time, I assumed I would be out some alimony but that would-be pennies compared to what I was making. A week or so later, I received a letter from my father-in-law. He informed me that not only would my old law firm be suing me for spousal neglect but I would be sued 150 million dollars for violating the terms of my contract when I had left his law firm. Somewhere in the fine print of my contract, it had specified that I could not work with any of the firm’s clients for a period of five years upon terminating my employment.
The court convened for my trial a few weeks later. Ashley showed up for the trial. She sat with her lover on the plaintiff’s side of the court and glared at me the entire trial. I lost on all counts. I was told that I would have to pay 5 million dollars in restitution and was disbarred from practicing law for ten years following the date of the trial. I lost everything. My house, my cars, my penthouse apartment, my jewelry and my career. Between my ex-father-in-law and my ex-wife, I was broke. The only friend I had left in the world was Johnny Walker Blue Label and I could not even afford that anymore.
I took up drinking cheap whiskey. It has been five years now since the trial. I have five more years to go before I can practice law again. I know that I am an alcoholic bum but can you blame me? I told you that there would be a life changing moral in this story for you but before I give it to you, I want my drink.”
Mike had concluded his story. I wondered what the life changing moral would be. I had some ideas but curiosity got the better of me. I decided to buy him his drink and let him finish his tale of woe.
“Bartender” I called, “bring my friend here a shot of Johnny Walker Scotch.” The Scotch was quickly downed by Mike with a look of joy and ecstasy on his face that would be hard to describe.
“Okay”, Mike began “I have had many years to reflect on my life and where it went wrong. I also know that not a man alive would at some point in their life not have been envious of mine. The sad part and the moral is that we all want things that we think will make us happy when the real happiness is what we have inside and what we bring to life, not what life brings to us.” With these last words of wisdom, Mike got off his bar stool and went out the same way he came in. I never saw him again.
I sat for an hour or so after he left thinking about what he had said. Just a few minutes before he had entered the bar, I was bemoaning my sorry life and denigrating my family. I decided to go home and hug my wife and kids.
Many years have past since I met Mike. My life is pretty much the same as it was before I met him, except that I have never been happier. My wife is beautiful and my kids are beautiful. I would not trade my life for all the money in the world.
Time for Questions:
Do you appreciate what you have? What does it take to make us happy? Is money an essential element of happiness? What if you had no money, could you still be happy? What is the most important person or thing in your life? Why?
Life is just beginning.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” — Melody Beattie
Years ago, religions enforced what I would call a pseudo moral code through the power of the state to enact laws desired by the most powerful religions. This of course reflected the power that religions had in society back when you could go to hell for missing mass on Sunday. Gambling was verboten. There was legalized horse race betting in only a few states, and a few states had some other sports such as greyhound racing or Jai Alai which you could bet on. Legally, you could only place bets at the venue. Of course, organized crime found it very lucrative to offer “off track” betting. Every street corner where I grew up had a bookie some place or other. And of course, the numbers game was a very popular way for fools to lose their money. Sports betting was done privately, and casino gambling did not start in Las Vegas until 1931. It had been legal earlier but was outlawed in 1910 and not legalized until 1931. The only lottery I ever heard of when I was growing up had to do with the Irish Sweepstakes. There must have been some way to buy these tickets, but I never investigated it.
Whiskey can now be purchased almost 24/7 in many states. You can buy it in grocery stores, gas stations, bars, and convenience stores. Perhaps no substance has been more abhorred by religions than whiskey. Benjamin Franklin said that “Beer is proof that God loved man and wanted him to be happy.” However, this was not the attitude of most religious organizations. Temperance movements motivated by so called moral considerations did their best to ban alcohol in the US. It is illegal in thirteen countries in the world. Several of the world’s major religions ban the use of alcohol. There are seventy-five scripture (Bible) warnings against the drinking of alcohol. Is it any wonder that so many religions have prohibited the drinking of alcohol.
Now there may be some of you reading my blog and expecting a fire and brimstone sermon regarding the sins of humanity and the temptations of the devil. Nothing could be further from my mind. I am not advocating going back to the religious sanctions or beliefs that fueled so much of our political system. In the first place, they were misguided and in the second place they penalized those who could practice moral virtues along with those most reluctant. I could never understand why I could not buy liquor on Sunday or after 10 PM on weekdays or in a grocery store. I have never received a DUI or even a warning for driving drunk.
The government has always been in the marketing business. They would market “SIN” if they could find a way to sell it or allow it to be sold. In some respects, they are already doing that with the legalization of gambling and their promotion of bigger and bigger lotteries. The poor buy more and more tickets when the odds go ever higher against anyone winning. Powerball’s odds are 1 in 292 million, and the combined populations in the states where tickets are sold equal nearly 320 million. What would anyone do with 2 billion dollars? (As I write this, the lottery of 2.0 billion has been won by a single person in California)
Thus, the uncoupling of Church and State in the constitution of the United States set the stage for a catastrophic imbalance between Moral Policy and Economic Policy. Over the years, the lack of influence in organized religions at the political level was abetted by the horrendous influence and power of Economic Policy. If Moral Policy was once the heart of a religion, it was supplanted by an Economic Policy which has become the main religion in America. This policy states that more is better and that you can never be too rich or have too much stuff.
What we once believed was a great political innovation to separate Church and State has led to this imbalance. There was no place in the state for religion and no place in religion for politics. America’s dominant dream for peace, justice and equality was replaced with a dream for more money, more power and more fame. The push by the State for this dream dwarfed any efforts by religion to provide a moral balance and the State had no legitimacy for morality. People are cast adrift amidst a chaotic and vicious ocean of competition for more and more stuff. No moral anchors exist that are powerful enough to counterbalance the tide of greed that this has brought to our shores. Guns have replaced morality as citizens arm themselves to prevent imagined attacks at taking away their STUFF.
Before you go off on a binge of happiness and celebrations, think for a minute what a positive answer to these questions might mean. There are still expectations and assumptions associated with any answer to the above questions. You assume that if you won the lottery, that you would not have to worry about paying bills, buying things you want etc. You assume that if you found true love, it would last forever and forever. You assume that finding meaning and purpose would bring you happiness. To all of these possibilities, I say maybe. You still have many choices and outcomes to each of these scenarios. These choices can leave us just as captive to our desires and wants as any of our responses to the “negative” “what ifs.”
My conclusion is that “What ifs” are intellectually amusing as a past-time but as for practical value they are close to useless. Seldom will you ever get to apply a solution to a “What if.” The possibility of something in real life happening exactly like it did the first time is less than the chance of finding identical snowflakes or fingerprints. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544 B.C. said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Those who forget the past may be condemned to repeat it, but the past will never be the same again. Living requires adaptability and resilience.
underlying or foundation problem to explain many senseless acts of violence and mayhem. We can see pictures today of people screaming at immigrants to go home and realize that many of these raging mobs are driven by fear. Fear of job loss, fear of economic uncertainty, fear of being displaced and fear of strangers.
nation I have heard deals with greed. It has been said that “Greed is not the worst of all sins, but it is the gateway to all others.” Reflecting on this comment provides some very interesting insights. For instance, why does anyone steal? They want more than they have, ergo greed. Why does anyone kill? Typical answers would include: To get more land, ergo greed; to get more money, ergo greed; to get something they want, ergo greed. The more I thought about greed as an explanation, the more I could see it being a key cornerstone to almost all acts of violence and terror. I was content to accept this underlying explanation until a few weeks ago when I attended my annual retreat.
s before me, I thought getting success would be the key to feeling complete. Success meant fame, fortune and admiration from the masses. I would have money to roll in. I would have girlfriends too numerous and beautiful to count. I would have crowds thronging to hear my every utterance. The path to success was uncertain but the laurels and rewards were assured if only I could find the right stair way. I looked everywhere. I read everything. I talked to everyone. Success would come with hard work. Success took risks. Success was not an overnight phenomenon. I needed to get an education first. I needed to save my money. I needed to invest. Everything I did was still not enough. I was not a success.
The abyss It is so big that there is no bridging it. None of the sides can see the other side. None of the sides has any common ground with the other side. None of the sides understands the language that the other side speaks. We might as well be earthlings talking to Martians. There is no lingua franca. Many of the “well-meaning” experts exhort both sides to try harder to bridge the gap or to work more diligently to listen to the other side. It seems to be assumed that all it will take to jump the gulf is good intentions. I cry bullshit on this. As the old aphorism goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It will take more than good intentions to heal the wound that infests our country.
The wants advertised on the TV and in the media are never fulfilling. We have a nation of brainwashed consumers who mistakenly think that more toys, bigger houses, more guns, and luxury cars will make them happy. We are a nation on a never-ending treadmill of consumer materialism where like rats we keep spinning the wheel and hoping to find happiness, but happiness never comes, and drugs take its place. 
As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the tensions in society grow ever more divisive. We see more road rage, more senseless shootings, more violence between men and women, less loyalty between employers and employees. The underpinning of society that should be based on human integrity and morality is replaced with an opportunism based on an amoral value system. Whatever we can get as long as we break no laws is considered to be moral. We see most politicians that have no commitment to anything except to collect more money so that they can stay in office. Their highest goal is to help the rich get richer, which of course includes themselves. 
I am not talking about the devil here or about spirituality. I am talking about a kind of insidious propaganda that has been spread by many groups and individuals. In this propaganda, one side of America is labeled as moral, ethical, righteous, and just. The other side is the opposite. The other side is everything negative. The other side is a composite of all the demons and evils that Americans believe in. The other side are communists, fascists, atheists, anti-democratic, anti-patriotic and un-American. One side is good. The other side is evil incarnate. You cannot talk to evil. You cannot discuss with the devil why he wants your soul. You cannot debate with Satan over the values that he has. Heaven and hell do not have weekly discussion groups. The language heard today, and what the media publishes drips with hate, innuendo, and disdain. The language fosters violence. I doubt the Founding Fathers ever conceived that the First Amendment would protect such speech. There are three elements that contribute to a hate speech culture that demonizes the other side: 
Malicious labeling is the name calling that goes on between both sides today wherein each side is labeled. You can hear it on almost every talk show program in America today. Name calling and name labeling. Commie pinko leftists! Intellectual elites! Radical socialists! Racist rednecks! Fascist dictators! Politicians, commentators, newscasters, and radio talk show hosts all use malicious labels to insult and demean those they disagree with. What have we let this country become when we allow such name calling? This kind of hyperbole demonizes the other side and creates a divide that cannot be overcome by rational conversation.
I do not think that the Founding Fathers of our nation believed that Government was evil. Certainly, they felt that there could be too much government intrusion on the rights of the populace. They invoked certain safeguards to protect both human rights and states rights. Nevertheless, they did not demonize government and not a single one of the Fathers ever referred to government as evil. Edmund Burke, the famous English conservative said, “The government that governs best is the government that governs least.” He never said, “government was evil.” It has become common place to hear refrains denigrating the role and necessity of government. This steady drumbeat of antigovernmental rhetoric has created a group of people that have no value for government and who support the idea that government should be abolished.
A few years ago I began to wonder why groups like the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, Antifa, The Proud Boys and many other such groups advocating violence against the government were not labeled as Terrorist Organizations. I asked a lawyer this question and he replied, “it is all politics.” I found that almost all the groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “hate groups” were designated as “extremist groups.” This means that they are not illegal, and they have the right to organize, march, rally and basically spread their hate across America. In 2019, The SPLC listed 940 hate groups across the USA. If any of these groups was labeled as a “Terrorist Group,” they would be on the same list as the Taliban, Boko Haram, The Mafia, Mexican Cartels and Al Qaeda. What is the difference between an extremist group and a terrorist group? It might surprise you to learn that a terrorist organization is defined as follows:
If this definition does not apply to the groups that tried to storm the US Capital on January 6th, 2021, I do not know what does. Just yesterday the Canadian government labeled the Proud Boys as a Terrorist Organization. This delegitimizes the group and takes their rights away. For Canada, it is a start. I am wondering when we are going to get started in the USA on such an effort. The First Amendment was never construed to allow hate speech and the advocating of violent actions to overthrow the government. Why do we not have the political will to outlaw these groups? We seem to have little compunction in penalizing Black groups like the Black Lives Matter Movement or the Black Panthers. We have a different standard when it comes to White Supremacy groups. 
The newspapers, TV and the Internet are today the major carriers for the hate and vituperation that has spread across America. On one side of the divide, we find the NY Times, the Washington Post and CNN News. On the other side, we find the NY Post, the Washington Examiner and Fox News. There are countless other purveyors of extreme and fanatical views. Each side reeks of headlines supporting nonobjective views and biased reporting. If objective reporting ever existed in the USA, it has been murdered and buried by the most pervasive media to ever exist. The media carries the hate and violence that is created by politicians, pundits, radio commentators and hate groups and ensures that it gets widely disseminated. Without the media, much of the divide would never have occurred. Hate needs a platform to be spread and the media is more than happy to host anything that it believes will sell itself and its advertising. 
Aging Capriciously 