Look for Changes in the Mirror

Our households, our communities, our states, our nation and our planet all face challenges these days. I only add “these days” to make a point, which is we have always faced challenges. The challenges change, so our methods of facing them must change, too. The United States of America, with our faith-infused, Constitution-based form of Democratic-Republic has the tools that we Americans can use to tackle our challenges. We have history on our side and our fellow Americans by our side. We can do this

The answers, the solutions may be complex, just as our society and our world have become more complex over the years, but some of our fundamental goals have very simple bases from which we can build our complex solutions.

Let’s start by focusing on the need to look to ourselves for many of the solutions.

Young people need to stay in school, high school in particular. One of the biggest divides in this nation is between those who are college educated and those who are not. College educated Americans have an unemployment rate of something just over 4%. Those without high school diplomas face a double digit unemployment rate. Another strong warning for young people: Don’t become parents too soon and wait until you get married first. The former is far more important, because very young parents, especially teen parents, face mountains of struggle just to make ends meet. The latter just makes life and living better, while the former can put up obstacles that can damage the lifetime of the parents and child.

Not a child anymore, not in school anymore? Get a job, any job, full-time, part-time or whatever. Can’t find one in your neighborhood? Move. There are always jobs somewhere in America. Get on the internet (don’t have a computer, go to the public library and use one there), find where jobs are and go there. And when you go there, become a part of their community, maintain your crib (where you live), do your job until you are ready to move on, if you don’t wind up staying, leave your crib in good enough shape for the next person to move right in.

Worried about health care? Most states, even California, have programs for low income folks. In California it is called MediCal, which provides proper and professional medical care, including birthing, for no or little expense.

Unhappy with your lot in life? Stuck in a - job with no future? Learn another skill. If you stay sober and off drugs, you can do this. If you are mostly drunk and/or stoned, you got problems, but they are your problems, ones you have caused yourself so get un-drunk, un-stoned first and you will be on your way to climbing out of that hole you call life.

Most important of all, is know where to place the blame for whatever situation you are in that you don’t like. The answer is clear: Blame nobody. That gets you nowhere except further down that hole.

Those who just sit around and blame big corporations, big government, big unions, personal skin tone, or whatever aren’t doing anything to make things better, for themselves or anybody else or especially their country.

Instead of trying to blame someone or some entity for your problems or the nation’s ills, look to yourself and see what changes you can make in you. While working on those, look at our society and see what changes you would like to make. Then, once you have established your own credibility by getting your own act together, then get involved, help make those changes.

Above all, don’t use violence or hatred as your tools of change. Although they can and sadly often do work, they don’t work for the long haul.

The power you need to exercise is your own personal power. Don’t turn your power over to big government, big business, big unions, big anything. The bigger they get, the smaller we get and the less power we wield. Government, businesses, unions, political organizations, etc. aren’t bad, but when they get too big, wield too
much power, they become more impersonal, too insulated from us, the people and
stop doing the good we want and need them to do.

There’s the story about the person who didn’t like the person they were, didn’t like their household, didn’t like their neighborhood, didn’t like their community, didn’t like their nation and didn’t like the world. So they changed themselves, which changed their household, which changed their neighborhood, which changed their
community, which changed their nation which changed the world.

It starts with us, you and me, the man or woman looking back when we gaze into a mirror.