TOT - Thought on Thursday - Abe Lincoln once said...

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” ― Abraham Lincoln

When you stop, sit back and think about it for a second, which is often hard to do in this go-go society that we live in, there are so many reasons to be happy.

To take the simple comparison of say what it was like to live 150 years ago in Lincoln's day.

Then: Mail took days or even weeks to get to simply another state.

Today: It takes nanoseconds to get your message to someone via email.

Then: Something like the measles or the flu could kill you.

Today: Flu-related deaths are a rarity and I can't recall a recent death due to the measles.

Then: If we go back a few decades further - it took Lewis & Clark over THREE YEARS to get from St. Louis to basically what is the outskirts of Seattle today!

Today: The same trip via car could land you in Seattle in under two days assuming you drive in shifts. Even if you took breaks to rest each night and an hour to go site-seeing each day you could easily make the same trip in under a week. Let's not even mention a one-way airplane ticket (4 hours since I mentioned it).

I guess the point is there are so many things we can be thankful for and happy about given that we live in such an advanced time and age.

Who knows, 150 years from now I can only imagine what human descendants complaints will be like for how unhappy they are. If we could peek into the future we'd probably laugh about what they consider to be the major problems of the day.

(TOT) Thought on Thursday - Freedom is not Free

Freedom is not Free

I used to think that this was just a sappy catchphrase. However, as I sit here in coffee shop on this 4th of July. Unable to go home because police and fireman have ordered me into a local coffee shop (one line coffee) due to a potential bomb threat. I realize that maybe it isn't just a catchphrase. 

In one of the wealthiest countries, with a system of government that is the closest thing to a pure democracy, I often take for granted how much freedom I actually do have as an American. 

We constantly cut the services of our police and firefighters but, simultaneously their are still people in the world who would want to harm people they've never met for the sole reason that they don't hold the same beliefs, same skin color or fly the same flag - to name a few. 

It's my sincere hope that someday, in the far far future, policemen will only exist in history books as a reminder of a very immature human species that liked to harm each other. Firefighting duties will be handled by super-smart computers that extinguish threats before they ever become dangerous. Unfortunately that's just a pipe dream today but, it's something worth wishing for. 

All that being said, I hope you had a nice and relaxing Fourth of July Holiday.