It’s easy to get disheartened these days. We hear so much bad news coming at us from every angle that I don’t wonder when people tell me that they’re distressed or depressed.
It seems that we can’t trust our government or big business. They seem to be out to spy on you or “get you” and many of the institutions that we have come to rely upon seem to be turning against us in every conceivable way. If they’re not turning against us they seem to be failing and disappointing us.
One solution is of course to pull into ourselves like turtles and try to block out the world as much as possible. We can throw up our arms in despair and say that there’s nothing to be done and we have no choice in the matter. We might as well just go along with whatever life has in store for us. It’s a very seductive path in that you don’t have to expend any effort to follow this path and you get a moderate reward for following along dutifully. Not everything that you want but at least enough or almost enough.
The other path is much harder of course. You can choose to engage life and try to shape it in the ways that you want it to go. You can look at the inequities of life and try to redress the balance in your favor. You can plan and work towards that economic status that you want by seizing every opportunity and not squandering your resources on petty things. You can affect change by supporting those causes that you believe in. You can talk and try to persuade people to your point of view.
It’s a much tougher path to follow and it doesn’t always lead to success. Indeed you stand a decent chance of failing if you follow that course. But let me ask you, even if you fail don’t you think that this is going to be a more interesting path to follow?
Would you rather be bored out of your mind waiting for something to be handed to you, waiting for life to happen to you at its own pace or would you rather go out and make life happen? Find out how things work, how those people who you read about in newspapers, magazines, and on websites make their lives into what they want them to be.
Which type of life would you rather have?
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