People like my grandfather (a legal immigrant) came to America to find opportunity better than what there was in Sweden. He said the problem in Sweden is that the taxes were so high that only the privileged could get ahead. In America we all have the same rights (at least that is the way it was supposed to be) but what we do with that depends on the decisions we make and our work ethic. The constitution did not promise everyone equal pay, equal taxes, equal smarts, equal talents primarily because it could not promise that. What it did say is that it would protect each of us and in fact I am not sure it gave individual rights but it gave that promise to the nation as a whole. (boy do I ramble sometimes)
I hope you don't believe that I am covering every aspect of those rights but I am saying that each of us can make decisions on how hard we want to work and we will reap the rewards for those decisions. whoops, I bet some folks will have a problem with that because the rewards are not always distributed fairly and you would be correct. What I am saying is that we can use our heads to choose but we are all limited by our basic talent, smarts, social skills etc.. In the old days folks persevered through hardship and they planned ahead for problems. There was the depression, WW I and WWII and the Korean War and Vietnam War and depressions and even the dust bowl and if you were a farmer there was bad weather and lots of times failure. What I am suggesting is Proverbs 2 says that the beginning of wisdom is knowledge and knowledge comes from experience both good and bad and that success is a function of adding up all your failures and short comings and overcoming them.
None of you can imagine how I see things because you did not walk in my shoes. You don't know of my failures and shortcomings but you have opinions and thoughts that may or may not be correct. Let me tell you what I see and my perception of a few folks:
Jim Heath - smartest guy in my class - successful because he raised a good family and invested his life how he saw fit.
Hugh Jones - US Marine - winner and overcomer
Jon Tanny Olsen - built a company through hard work and tenacity and raised a family and has a successful marriage to Pam.
Yep, these are the three boys of the Grainola 5 and sometimes 6. I wish I knew what happened to Denise.
Joy Frank - she is the sometimes 6 - teacher, wife, parent and grandparent - beautiful person
These are all successful folks and I do not know what their net worth is in dollars but they are inspirations to me and their net worth to me is enormous. Their lives were invested and they spread their chips (get it?) around and in the end (or close to the end) they are successful.
So, back to spreading around those cow chips. If you spread around a little manure there might be some mess along the way but in the end growth occurs.
So what do you learn in the Osage?
- A chip off the old block is not necessarily a bad thing
- A little BS is good especially if it is dry and thrown around a little
- And if you take those chips and Pile them Higher and Deeper you will have a PHD following your name with a comma
Thanks for listening,
gary
golson21@hotmail.com
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