What is Today’s Success?

I love fantasy games. The world is full of them right now. Everyone wants the easy win, the ultimate victory to peace, love, prosperity – especially prosperity. Independently wealthy. Rich and famous; all of it. The revolution of the digital age has made it seem even more real. Because we are in the midst of an age of change as big, probably bigger, than the industrial revolution, everyone suddenly thinks instant wealth from easy ideas should be attainable by everyone. Haha. It’s not. Never will be. Sorry to burst that big bubble.

Creative thinking is an inventive, intuitive, inexact, iterative process. I just watched an instagram post, well part of a post because I wasn’t going to waste my time on the whole sales pitch of it, about how everyone, yes even you, can master the art of mind control. Mind control?! Okay. Now, I get we don’t know a whole lot about how powerful our brains really can be, and how much potential we have within ourselves. I understand we are making strides into controlling specific brain wave output in order to generate desired outcomes or control simple machines through hardwired feedback. One day we may actually be able to anticipate the responses or questions others may have of us. To say we can do that today without specific and extensive feedback training is farfetched. It really sounds more like meditation, discipline and directed thinking. Dare I say it – I’m skeptical. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, smells like a duck… it’s probably a duck.

Being a skeptic these days is like being a curmudgeon, a stick in the mud, a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist. No one wants to hear about what could really happen. Everyone wants to believe. I’ll tell you, belief only gets you started. The rest is hard work, perseverance, vision, brains, courage, creativity. There’s no short cut, never has been and I doubt there ever will be. Especially with everyone thinking they deserve what everyone else has. That’s just socialism, which means no one has or does anything special – we’re all the same. God Forbid!

Does it sound like I’m leaping from subject to subject, concept to concept? Maybe. But they’re all interconnected. It’s a slippery slope to the bottom, and once you take the first step it gets easier and easier to justify the steps that come after. Take this nonsense about gender identification. What baloney. You are what you were born to be. Sorry. No one but nature (or God, if you’re so inclined) made that choice. But sadly, you are what you are, and you will have to make the best of it on your own. There’s no one else to blame, and isn’t that too bad. These days, we all want someone to blame or to pay the consequences for what we are, where we are, and why we are. It’s not our fault. We are not responsible! Not us, by God!

It’s time we stopped looking outside ourselves and started looking inside, started accepting we made choices from the choices that were made for us or available to us. Teddy Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” No one can ask more of you, nor you more of yourself. But you must have the courage and forthrightness to be honest with yourself to find your limits and stretch them. That is how you grow, get better, be more and do more. That is how you contribute to society. Society has no obligation to contribute to you; you must contribute to it before it will return the favor. I guarantee you it will give back, but it might not be how you expect. Muhammad Ali said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” Remaining humble and respectful will teach you to appreciate whatever opportunities it provides.

To steal a phrase from John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your (fellow man) can do for you, ask what you can do for your (fellow man).” You will be happier and rewarded for it. And no mind control freak can take that from you.