The Past Way of Facing The Future

Ronald Reagan, "I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future."

There is something about reviewing the lessons of the past to prepare us to face the challenges of the future. What a glorious legacy of faith and courage has been left behind by those who have gone before us. My admiration for them deepens the longer I live.

Mostly my thoughts turn towards early settlers of this Great Nation. These people invested all they had into their "American Dreams."

There are so many things that were present in the "old days" that would do us good today.

One of the biggest problems in the world today are distractions. We have so much evil that is so easily accessed. We have smartphones, tablets, magazines, computers, video games, social media, and infinitely easy access to videos and music. We do not have to do any more that tap our screens to be engulfed in wickedness and sleez. We cannot go anywhere, or do anything without having to have our guards up, and standing up for what we believe in. 

We are so busy with all the stuff we fill our lives with that we are tempted so much that we don't have time to do the things that we should such as speeding time with our families, getting involved in our communities, assisting our neighbors, invigorating our minds in the many ways that can be done. We instead spend our time posting to social media sites such as Facebook and twitter. The time we are not spending posting, we are spending following others' posts. Staying up to date with the world and friend is a wonderful blessing we have in the world today, but it has become one of our greatest distractions. Are we up to date with our social media but lacking in our relationship with our own spouses, parents, siblings, or children? The more these things steal away our attention the less attention we have for needed things.

 Those who went before us had mentalities that things that are most important stayed most important. Families worked together, ate together, prayed together, and played together. Distractions were less available and thus were less effective, but the good that resulted from the lack of distractions is a good that is sorely needed today.

Work spills over into the home life with emails that come to smartphones and calenders that are reminding us of work related problems. One cannot get away from the business of life unless they make it a goal to leave work where it belongs, at work. Work seems to be consuming the lives of people today, viewed as the purpose of life instead of simply a needed task to survive. Our predecessors had no problem with work spillover. Work for them work was to the degree and extent that it was needed to live, it was not what they lived for. It was a means, not the end. Sadly, we see less of that mentality today. 

In a world where divorce increases at a higher rate than does marriage, we must ask ourselves why, and then apply the lessons learned from the past, to help us solve our problems we face now. Something I saw the other day was about marriage. The moral was to explain how an old couple were still married after decades together, the reason was simple, we were taught that when something broke, you didn't throw it away and get a new one, you fixed it. Could not this mentality help cure us of our current divorce rate problem?

This list of challenges could go on for some time, the point is, these challenges are not easier or more difficult to deal with than those of the people of the past; but they can be conquered just the same, if we use the lessons we learn from their actions to conquer these struggles.

I repeat President Reagan's words:

"I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future."

There are so many aspects of our lives that this principle can be applied in.

I encourage and invite us all to take time to reflect on the past, our own pasts included, and use what we learn to help us to face the future.

Fighting the Norms

"...a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense

One of the greatest concerns of today and the future is the realization that the younger generation is raised in a world where socialism, immorality, and atheism are the norms. The world they will experience is one that will tell them that self is more important that others, more important than society. It is a version of the world that most of us strive to fight against, because it is foreign to us, we know of its being evil. The younger generation will grow up with this being the norm, they will be desensitized to it. This creates more room for decline, and more room for evil growth. We must rally together and cry as one, and never cease crying for the cause of righteousness and morality. This tumult must never be ceased, for the sake of all humanity.

Liberty is Earned

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
• Edmund burke-Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).

"For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest..."
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense

We, the people, are responsible for our having freedom and liberty or going without. If we can control our own actions, without the need of a government stepping in, we can be free. Only those who can live being accountable to a higher Power and Being with or without an earthly power there to watch over us can be truly free. Successful society is based on eternal principles, principles that have proven themselves over time. Principles that not coincidentally coincide with principles found in religious views and moral circles. If a people can hold to those principles without needing a government to step in to force them, they can truly be free. More laws are not the answer. Evil must be rooted out from the inside, and then the outward actions can naturally turn good. Less self gratification breeds more liberty.