One More Day Alive

By this time I am sure you all have received your share of holiday emails and messages reminding you all of all the things that you have to be grateful for, so I won’t bore you with another.

Since I spend most of the year telling you how great your lives are, I thought I would switch gears at this time of year, and remind you of all the things that you have to be annoyed by.

So after you are done with Christmas dinner, I want you all to take a few moments to consider the following:

All the great presents who wished you received that you didn’t. (Can you believe they actually thought you would like that junk they bought you!)

How the holidays turn mildly annoying everyday traffic into lousy logjams filled with totally rude, incompetent drivers who are capable of turning even the most loving and tolerant people into proponents of capital punishment.

The way your company cut back on the Christmas party by having everyone bring something to eat and then docked your paycheck for the time you spent at the party.

Your boss, or boss’s boss – one of them is probably a thorn in your side.

The lovely pre-holiday letter from your bank informing you of the new fees they will charging next year. Happy New Year!

GAS PRICES!!!!

That weird, annoying guy in your neighborhood who tries tirelessly to piss everybody else off – and succeeds!

Your kid’s idiot teacher who seems to know less about the subject matter than the students but insists your child is the source of all the problems in their class.

CONGRESS!

Government red tape!

Corporate greed!

Kim Kardashian – or any Kardashian!

Mindless, stupid newscasts!

Doomsayers, and anyone who finds a way to turn a normal conversation into a discussion of the Mayan calendar and the end of the world.

TAXES!

Ok, are you all pretty disgusted and fumed now? Are you ready to go postal at your local post office now? (Provided the budget cuts didn’t close that one down.)

Now take a deep breath, and think about all the people in your life who make all that crap worth putting up with.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A WONDERFUL, BLESSED NEW YEAR MAKING ALL OF THEM AS HAPPY AS YOU CAN!

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Profit and public responsibility, or at least accountability, are not unrelated. In fact, maybe they are inexorably connected to each other.  But don’t just take my word for it.

The recent backlash over proposed new debit card fees by banks in America is the perfect example. The fact that those banks finally listened to the protestations of their customers is the best news yet for the future of America – and the future of capitalism.

Because the last two years have been a real test for business in America making many wonder if capitalism would survive the backlash of public protests.

But the reality is that outside of a few wacky extremists crying for outright socialism most Americans don’t oppose capitalism or profits. What they are fed up, and rightfully so, is the proliferation of unfettered GREED and the rise of an embarrassingly irresponsible corporate culture of selfishness!

Case in point: the debit card fee fiasco. This all began in September after Bank of America foolishly decided to try to nickel and dime the American public (the same American public who bailed them out with a huge stimulus just a few years ago) by adding a $5-a-month fee to use debit cards. Other banks soon announced they would do the same.

Within a few months there was a huge public outcry from customers with many threatening to leave en masse. All this finally made all the banks including Bank of America reverse their decision.

Now obviously these banks changed their minds because they realized that in this particular situation they stood to lose customers. And that would cost them more profit in the long run than they would make in the short run by adding the fees.

But maybe this is more than just an isolated case. Maybe it means that corporate America is remembering the bottom line of capitalism is not just dollars, but SENSE too – common sense that says that caring about people, about the world around you will improve your profits. That’s because people are more apt to work for and buy from companies that are nice instead of nasty.  It is proven time and time again.

Henry Ford, one of the greatest, and most successful, capitalists in American history – the father of the assembly line – purposely raised his employees’ salaries more than he needed to in order to enable them to buy his cars.  That wasn’t just because he was a nice guy. He knew it would create generations of Ford Customers that would inevitably in the long run earn the company much more than it cost in the short run. But the byproduct of that was he made a whole lot of employees happier and better off too, and he was probably the happier for it as well!

Now I do not think it is government’s responsibility to make these companies act morally. (The exception is when the whole game is rigged for instance in the case of collusion or monopoly.) We need free will and free markets in order for moral decisions to be possible. God does not make us do the right thing, and neither should government.  

I truly believe eventually the people will get tired of being taken advantage of, and they will rise up and make these companies do the right thing with the power of their wallets.

But if everything I have said is true then it begs the question: Why have there been so many short-sighted selfish companies in the last few decades in America? 

The answer is simple – stupidity!  If everyone (the companies, the employees and the consumers) prospers more in the long run, by running a considerate and socially responsible business, then only a fool would do differently.

But thank God some of those fools are beginning to wise up.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about how our mounting debt crisis is going to saddle our children and our grandchildren with great difficulty.

Well, thank God we are finally talking about our children. Now maybe we can start talking about all the ways we need to help them right now as well as in the future.

Twenty years ago the first article I ever wrote professionally was an opinion article in the local daily newspaper that was inspired by an interview I did with the director of St. Mary’s Food Bank. He informed me the hunger rate in children was a whopping 25 percent.

It was unfathomable to me that a quarter of our children could be going to bed hungry every night. Unlike adults, children are helpless to help themselves out of such a situation.
So why would we possibly allow such a situation to continue?

In 2011, the state of our children is still in jeopardy. There is still a 20 percent hunger rate in children. The good news is that’s down 5 percent; the bad news is that it’s still too high. And when you add to that the deficits children face in the availability of health care and education, it begs the question why.

I dare to be optimistic and suggest it’s not because we can’t change it, but maybe it’s because we are way too accustomed to feeling good in our society — at the expense of our children. But a little attitude shift could change everything.

Just look at the number of children who have been sacrificed to abortion — 42 million globally each year. The number one reason given for wanting an abortion in this country is not hardship but inconvenience.

But a friend who had an abortion 10 years ago because she thought a child would get in the way of her life recently confided in me how differently she now sees things. After a lifetime of pain, suffering and loneliness, she realizes the life she could have had with that child, not to mention the life she could have created and fostered would more than outweigh the loss of her “freedom.”

Look at the huge surge of drug use in the “if-it-feels-good -do-it” 1960s, ’70s and ’80s in America, and then look at the fact that since 1986, more than 70 percent of the child welfare cases in America have been shown to be caused in some part by substance abuse.

My prayers are with any individual who has ever suffered from a drug addiction. But I hope with all my heart that anyone with a child comes to their senses and realizes that the life of their child is at stake every time they give in to their addiction.

Maybe we don’t all need as many comforts, as many excuses, as many vices, as many conveniences, or to “feel good” as much as we think.

Thirty years ago my Fr. turned down a high-paying job in Los Angeles because I had asthma and he knew the smog would kill me. My mother sacrificed a career as an opera singer to be a mother to three children. They knew their most important job was being parents.

Ten years ago I interviewed a retired chief petty officer and nurse living on modest wages who decided to adopt 10 foster children because they knew those children needed them.

Maybe what we need — and what will serve us even more in the long run — is if we step up to the plate to take care of our kids, to give them the education, the resources and the attention they need, even it means sacrificing a little of what we think we need.

Then hopefully all this talk about the future of our children will make its way into the present.

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A few years ago I struck up a conversation with a man sitting next to me on a plane. We started talking about work, family and the standard friendly fare people engage in while trapped next to each other for an hour or so with nowhere else to go.

He told me about his daughter, all grown up now and a financial analyst who lived in Denver happily with her husband and two children of her own.  But only a few years ago she narrowly escaped with her life from her office in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Bringing up 9/11 reminded me of a story I wrote a few years earlier about one of America ’s greatest unknown heroes, a man named Rick Rescorla, who saved so many lives that fateful day in the Towers.

Rick was a war hero, whose quick thinking and altruistic leadership saved and comforted scores of men in one of the war’s first major battles of the Vietnam conflict in a place called the Ia Drang Valley, where American forces were surrounded and up against insurmountable 10-1 odds.  Over 300 American soldiers and almost 3000 Vietnamese lost their lives in a couple of days.  Lt. Rescorla left Vietnam with a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and Bronze Stars for Valor and Meritorious Service for his incredible efforts to save lives in a place where so many were lost. 

After the war, Rescorla went to work for Morgan Stanley as head of security for their Trade Center offices, and it was a job he didn’t take lightly.  For years he racked his brain trying to think of all the things that could possibly ever go wrong in the towers and all the ways he could get people out safely in those situations.  His biggest concern was terrorism.

Before the first Trade Center bombing in ’91 he rightly predicted the towers were vulnerable to a bomb detonated in the basement.  And prior to 9/11, he told his superiors that the next time it would be a plane filled with gas.

So he prepared.  He ran the employees through drill after drill until they knew how to get out of that building in their sleep.  He prepared contingency plans for his contingency plans.

Then on the morning of the attacks, as the Port Authority instructed everyone to stay put, he led a civilized charge out the door with a bullhorn in hand telling people to get out, no matter what they heard from anyone else.  His well-laid plans worked like clockwork, getting over 2700 of Morgan Stanley’s employees out alive, all except Rick and several of his security detail who went back to help others.

As I told the story to my traveling companion, tears began to stream down his face.  He revealed that his daughter worked in the South Tower in the offices of Morgan Stanley, and on the morning of the attacks when the first plane hit the North Tower, the force of the explosion was so intense it shattered the window in her office showering her with glass and debris sending her and her colleagues running for cover, and running right into Rick Rescorla.  My traveling friend’s daughter was one of those very lucky people, along with almost every employee of Morgan Stanley, who got out alive, thanks to Rick. 

When I first told Rick Rescorla’s story back in 2001, I knew there were thousands of people thankful for Rick’s diligence, preparedness and dutiful courage.  But there was no way to know then the true ramifications of his actions, not until this moment when I saw them in the flesh. I heard and felt the joy Rick’s devotion and sacrifice made possible pouring out of this grateful father’s heart, as he told me of the wonderful life and the beautiful family his daughter was blessed with since then.

As we reflect this year on the anniversary of 9/11 let’s remember that in every tragedy, there is an opportunity – in our families, our communities, in our nation and our world –to reach out to love in extraordinary ways. The ripple that results will be more amazing than any of us can ever dream of.

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As Labor Day appraoches so does too the unofficial end of summer and happily the end of the summer heat. The long weekend is celebrated with backyard barbecues and pool parties, as families and friends gather together for one last chance to have some summer fun, while football fans everywhere celebrate the beginning of football season.

But do any of us really stop and think about what Labor Day is really about and why it was important enough to be a holiday in the first place? Well, the first Labor Day in the United States became a federal holiday in 1894 as a way for the government to reconcile with unions and citizens in general, after workers were killed by U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, 15 years earlier.

The killing was of course one of those tragic and unintended mishaps, but it made many in the country realize that there needed to be some safeguards installed in our system that would help to protect laborers from exploitation and abuse. Making Labor Day an official holiday was meant to signal that our government recognized that the everyday laborer, no matter how menial the job, was important, had an innate value, and was worthy of all the same human rights of business owners, gentry and those in government. And that they would never again be forgotten or mistreated.

In other words, Labor Day is supposed to remind us not only of the value of hard work, but that all those who do it are human beings, not just cogs in a machine.

But this Labor Day maybe it’s an even more poignant reminder for a very important and overlooked particular group of workers: the unemployed. Those struggling to find work are just as important, valuable and meaningful as everyone else — and it is important to remember that in the search for new work.

Helping each other

With the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent, we all need to help those without work to find it. It’s our Christian duty to help them.

Because when we are not able to work, we feel less than human somehow, less than involved, less than important. And nobody should ever feel that.

Just as the federal government eventually recognized that every worker needed to be treated as a human being with human rights, not just as a means to production, we must all remember that our value is not just what we can produce in our labor.

We derive our value from God, and from the knowledge that we were created to love and be loved. One of the ways we can do that is by working and helping society with something that it needs. Another one of the ways that we realize that value is by letting people love us and to let them experience the divinely ordained joy that comes from that. There should never be any shame involved in needing others.

So if you are looking for work, reach out to anyone you know and proudly tell them you want to work, and ask if they know anyone who needs someone of your exquisite and unique value.

And for all of you who know anyone who needs work, it is your duty to help them to regain their feelings of worth and value, and to help them find work.

Times are tough all over, and we all need to stop thinking that “help” is a four letter word. We all need to work together in every way we can to celebrate the value of humanity — and that’s something we can really celebrate this Labor Day.

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What do all predictors of doom have in common? Answer: they are usually wrong. And they get a whole lot of attention by convincing a whole lot of innocent bystanders something is about to bring about the end of the world as we know it.

A few months back on May 21, one of those crazy, but extremely rich and crafty doomsayers named Harold Camping predicted Judgment Day. He claimed God revealed this date to him, even though the Bible clearly tells us no one will know when this day will come.

In fact that’s the whole point – we don’t know because we don’t need to know. Anymore than we need to know the nature of heaven or what God looks like. These are things not for us, but for God to worry about.

Camping was wrong. And most doomsayers usually are. But we don’t know they are wrong until God has proven them wrong with a good dose of reality. In the meantime they make a whole lot people very unhappy and cause some very bad things to happen.

Camping’s stunt convinced a number of vulnerable people to sell all their belongings, or to quit their jobs, or to uproot their families and bring on much needless pain, suffering and worry, as opposed to simply living a good life and leaving the rest to God.

Reflecting upon this man’s irresponsible, panic-causing actions, I couldn’t help but think of a few other doomsayer movements.

There was that group of people back in the 1970s who said that if we continued to have children the world would come to an end by the year 2000. They were wrong, but they were partially responsible for a skyrocketing rise in abortions in the world, not to mention a whole lot of childless couples who felt too scared to bring more children into the world.

Then there were those who said the Soviet Union and the United States would blow each other to smithereens. That never happened because both sides were filled with people who not only didn’t want that to happen, but were doing everything possible to prevent it. But it did terrify my generation for most of our youth causing hellish nightmares and undue stress.

Finally our latest and greatest doomsayers are hell bent on convincing us man is an evil nuisance whose presence is destroying the planet, and that we need to turn our world upside down to fix it, or else we will all melt away.

Yet mounting evidence is proving the whole temperature cycle of this planet is much more complex and out of our control than we could ever imagine. Furthermore, esteemed British scientists at Rothamsted, the United Kingdom’s largest agricultural research center, have recently suggested extra carbon dioxide in the air from global warming could dramatically increase crop yields and reduce water consumption by about 50 percent or more by 2050, feeding and saving the lives of millions of starving people across the world. God works in mysterious ways.

Clearly, we pollute as we live. But we also clean up. There is plenty we can do to improve on that for the sake of the human beings it will help. But we don’t need to stop all of our industry, quit our jobs and jump out a window because it will be better for the earth if we are not around.

We are commanded to live meaningful, loving lives by obeying God’s commandments, and then to trust in the Lord. Whether that means preparing for Judgment Day by respecting God, our families and friends, or responsible natural family planning, or not waging war against our fellow man needlessly, or preparing a better and cleaner world for our children by not selfishly or haphazardly polluting it, there are always ways to live better and to be better servants of our Lord.

Let’s concentrate on that, and let God worry about the end of the world.

What do all predictors of doom have in common? Answer: they are usually wrong. And they get a whole lot of attention by convincing a whole lot of innocent bystanders something is about to bring about the end of the world as we know it.

A few months back on May 21, one of those crazy, but extremely rich and crafty doomsayers named Harold Camping predicted Judgment Day. He claimed God revealed this date to him, even though the Bible clearly tells us no one will know when this day will come.

In fact that’s the whole point – we don’t know because we don’t need to know. Anymore than we need to know the nature of heaven or what God looks like. These are things not for us, but for God to worry about.

Camping was wrong. And most doomsayers usually are. But we don’t know they are wrong until God has proven them wrong with a good dose of reality. In the meantime they make a whole lot people very unhappy and cause some very bad things to happen.

Camping’s stunt convinced a number of vulnerable people to sell all their belongings, or to quit their jobs, or to uproot their families and bring on much needless pain, suffering and worry, as opposed to simply living a good life and leaving the rest to God.

Reflecting upon this man’s irresponsible, panic-causing actions, I couldn’t help but think of a few other doomsayer movements.

There was that group of people back in the 1970s who said that if we continued to have children the world would come to an end by the year 2000. They were wrong, but they were partially responsible for a skyrocketing rise in abortions in the world, not to mention a whole lot of childless couples who felt too scared to bring more children into the world.

Then there were those who said the Soviet Union and the United States would blow each other to smithereens. That never happened because both sides were filled with people who not only didn’t want that to happen, but were doing everything possible to prevent it. But it did terrify my generation for most of our youth causing hellish nightmares and undue stress.

Finally our latest and greatest doomsayers are hell bent on convincing us man is an evil nuisance whose presence is destroying the planet, and that we need to turn our world upside down to fix it, or else we will all melt away.

Yet mounting evidence is proving the whole temperature cycle of this planet is much more complex and out of our control than we could ever imagine. Furthermore, esteemed British scientists at Rothamsted, the United Kingdom’s largest agricultural research center, have recently suggested extra carbon dioxide in the air from global warming could dramatically increase crop yields and reduce water consumption by about 50 percent or more by 2050, feeding and saving the lives of millions of starving people across the world. God works in mysterious ways.

Clearly, we pollute as we live. But we also clean up. There is plenty we can do to improve on that for the sake of the human beings it will help. But we don’t need to stop all of our industry, quit our jobs and jump out a window because it will be better for the earth if we are not around.

We are commanded to live meaningful, loving lives by obeying God’s commandments, and then to trust in the Lord. Whether that means preparing for Judgment Day by respecting God, our families and friends, or responsible natural family planning, or not waging war against our fellow man needlessly, or preparing a better and cleaner world for our children by not selfishly or haphazardly polluting it, there are always ways to live better and to be better servants of our Lord.

Let’s concentrate on that, and let God worry about the end of the world.

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By Chris Benguhe

In 1992, I graduated from college dreaming of becoming a writer. That same year Franky Carrillo went to jail for murder — sentenced to life for a crime he didn’t commit.

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A perfect stranger found my sunglasses the other day in the middle of a parking lot and turned them into the office of my condo complex. What are the odds of that today when we are more apt to expect someone to steal our stuff than return it? Not to mention who even has the time to do the right thing in today’s hustle and bustle world?

It made my week. You see, the week before I lost a tooth, had my hand blow up after being bitten by a wild animal, and lost a lucrative book contract. Losing my sunglasses was just one of those punctuations to a dreadful batch of events — the kind that often leads to dramatic breakdowns in bad Hollywood movies. Having them returned brought me back from the brink.

Now I know sunglasses are not the end all, be all (unless you live in Arizona) but the point is that sometimes it’s the simple things that remind us of how wonderful the world is — and how easy it is to make it even better.

Maybe we don’t have to personally stop global warming, or end all of the world’s almost countless wars. Maybe we don’t have to have the greatest job in the world, or make a world-changing discovery. Maybe we don’t have to single-handedly save the world.

Maybe we just have to do the right thing every day in our own lives, and let God work in His amazing ways in our hearts and others to do the rest.

If you watch the news or read the papers lately, you might believe it’s the end of the world. Only God knows when and how the world began and when and how it will end. That’s not for us to be concerned with.

Nor should we allow ourselves to be so stressed out with fixing all the problems in our world — the big ones and even our small ones — that we forget how to simply live our day-to-day lives the way Christ wanted us to.

He said to love our neighbor as ourselves. He wanted us to rise up every day to the challenge of rejecting those negative human emotions that are all too easy to give into: fear, hatred, selfishness, self-pity and self-indulgence.

That’s the “big job” that God asks, if not demands, from us every day. And when you do it, some pretty incredible stuff can happen. When you don’t, all the “world-changing” work in the world may not matter.

The world is a good place when we make it one with our kindness, caring and hopeful spirit, one which believes that “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Go out today and make this a heaven on earth, at least in the way you live, and you might just help a crazy writer or a hundred other people you don’t even know not to have a nervous breakdown. Who knows all the ways that will help the world?

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A few months back my bed broke — OK, no jokes! That might be nothing more than a minor inconvenience for some, but for me it was one big challenge. And one I am glad I didn’t have to face alone.

That’s because I have battled anxiety and insomnia most of my life, so a broken bed inspires both of my lifelong challenges. To say I was a little agitated is an understatement. After three months of sleeping on the floor

I was losing it.

Adding insult to injury is that it’s hard to explain your troubles to anybody else because their first response is, “Just go buy a bed.”

Ugh. Not so easy. Here’s the problem: For insomniacs, all it takes is a little bit of discomfort and agitation to make it impossible to sleep. And of course, anxiety over finding the right bed makes it difficult to find the right bed since every time you lie down on one, you are anxious about whether or not you will be able to sleep on it. That anxiety makes you actually unable to sleep on it.

For all of you out there saying, “That’s crazy!” welcome to my world.

For those thinking my difficulty choosing a bed is somehow connected to my inability to choose a mate at 42, that’s an entirely different conversation.

Now I share this personal dilemma of mine with you for two reasons.

First, I want to give my friends and family a break from hearing about it, and you are the only ones left I can “entertain” with my situation.

The other reason is that it’s important for people to be honest, to be real and to talk about the “little” problems that sometimes don’t get talked about, so we all can all feel a little better and realize we are not alone in our varied mental anguishes.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, some 64 million Americans regularly suffer from insomnia each year. The principal causes range from simple stress and tension to full-blown anxiety issues. I am clearly not alone.

Most of my friends and family know about my sleep issues, and my anxiety issues, which makes life a whole lot easier to deal with. That’s because they are constantly reaching out and trying to help, even if it’s with a joking jab or two from time to time.

As for dealing with my underlying insomnia and anxiety issues themselves, it’s very important for me to stick to schedules, to exercise regularly, to eat well, and pray a lot. But just talking about it makes it easier, turning it into something almost funny instead of maddening, which it can truly be at times. 

We all have different crosses to bear in life, and this is mine. But when I share it, it makes it easier for my friends and family to share them with me, and we all help each other carry our loads. 

Reach out to friends and family in whatever way you can, and you never know how they will be able to help.

That’s why, despite my honest and hard-fought efforts to buy a new bed (I have already bought and returned three that just didn’t work), I am currently sleeping on a mattress that a friend loaned me, which is doing the trick. 

You never know when a friend will be able to help you to rest your weary head, too.

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