My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:
These are dark days made worse by man’s selfishness and cruelty. Societies have historically come together during difficult times to help each other, yet during this time of pandemic when more than 5 million people have died globally and nearly 750,000 people have died in the U.S. alone, we still cruelly spout misinformation about vaccines and public health protocols, and many still refuse the simple act of vaccination for the protection of America’s most vulnerable — our young children, our elderlies, and our infirmed.
We pay lip service daily to Christian values — from the “In God We Trust” on our dollar bills to the use of the Bible for swearing in ceremonies — yet we cannot live the Two Commandments given to us by Jesus: Love God and Love Your Neighbors. We demand control over our bodies when resisting the COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates (conveniently forgetting that mandated vaccination has been part of our childhood and schooling for decades) yet force our will upon others when they seek to abort fetuses to protect the mother’s health, in cases of incest or rape, etc.
We are an unprincipled lot. We are a lot of contrarians, happily fighting against the ideas and positions of others but refusing to live according to our own principles.
Don’t be like that. Live by your principles. Be principled in your thoughts and actions.
If you cannot articulate a principle for your action, then don’t do it. Don’t be a mindless sheep that follows the herd for lack of self-discipline and self-awareness.
Have the courage to act on your principles … even when you are the only one. I did when I stood alone against a multi-billion dollar organization that had defrauded consumers for years and years. Many knew. Despite their frequent complaints about the illegality of it all, none chose to act besides me.
Winners do. Losers whine.
Worse, winners build while losers destroy. From my years working on Capitol Hill, I know that it is extremely difficult to get legislation passed, but extremely easy to introduce poison pills to destroy bills. The same is true in life. Those courageous and relatively few work hard to build while the many often set out to destroy what they could not build. The latter includes the ankle biters we encounter daily in life — those who prefer to pull us down to their levels simply because they cannot rise to ours for want to effort and grit.
Be not like them, my sons. Always help if you can, but never do harm if you cannot help. Work hard to build a better future for yourselves and your community. We don’t live in a vacuum. The garbage and bad forms that once played gleefully to the crowd watching the Jerry Springer Show have now firmly entrenched themselves into the everyday lives of too many Americans. Sex tapes? Normal. No longer even shocking. Drunken tirades — or worse, sober tirades — and acts of gratuitous violence and cruelty are now almost common fodder for many social media and news media outlets. The garbage and poison that we have once dumped on distant shores have contributed to the environmental degradation that now affects our air, our water, our communities.
Be principled in your acts and thoughts. You know better. You are raised better. We are not animals that give in to every whim and defecate and fornicate anywhere the mood strikes. We don’t steal from the poor and vulnerable just because we can. We live by a higher code of conducts. We live by our principles.
Society can only progress if it remains true to its principles and not devolve into an animalistic free-for-all where those with the means and abilities take advantage of everyone else for the former’s short term gains. In the long term, shitting on the poor and vulnerable will only weaken society and hasten its demise. Likewise, in the long term, eschewing vaccines and endangering the vulnerable will only create additional hosts for the COVID-19 virus to mutate and grow more virulent to the detriment of everyone.
Stay true to your principles, even if others don’t. Remember, you are the boss of you and of no one else.
All my love, always and forever,
Dad
shoshandjaialai 