What are you looking for?

What are you looking for?

Perhaps you’re a serious student, doing research.  Good for you.

 

Or maybe you’re out here in cyberspace wandering around looking for something to amuse, or someone to abuse, an instituion to accuse, or woundeed memory to lose; you could be searching for your muse, patching together a ruse, singing the blues.  Choose. It’s just a click here, a reversible decision there.   Choose your cup of tea, or your poison; imbibe an elixir to intensify your wildest fantasies; swallow a rant to confirm your worst fears, chase an old ghost of bygone years, carry a torch till it consumes your tears, keyboard a message till someone hears. 

Perhaps you’re exploring the wild online west of anything goes, the untamed frontiers of human angst and quest.  You’re wanting to find yourself out on that thrilling limb.  Having groped up the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you’re out there on a branch, hanging on and wondering how you got there, having no support, fluttering in the breeze.  You’re looking at the ground and wondering how to get back down to earth. Maybe that’s you. Click the “Home” button?  Click the “Next” button?

Is this you? You want to push the envelope.  You want to rage against the machine,   You wamt to rip the world  to shreds, and  maybe yourself with it.  You want to hate someone. You want to scam someone. You want to screw someone. It’s all out there.  Choose your weapon; take up your implement of destruction. 

Maybe you’ll get caught into a  wind of discontent to fan the flames of your dreaded fears.  The robber bankers are out to get us; they want to get our homes; they want to collect all the real assets for themselves.  The banking crisis is all about the white collar crooks coming to swindle  us little guys out of our homes, using inflated money, fine print, and congress. 

Or is this you?  You’re looking for support. You want to find others who will confirm what you have already decided you believe.  You want to keep your SUV clean. You want to finance the kids’ college. You want to save the world. You want to love someone; you want to make love to someone. It’s all out there. Choose you implement of construction.

Out here in the wild online west of anything goes, you’ll see a spider spinning a web of discontent, visit a phisherman with a net content that’s heaven-sent ,  hear the groans of overdue  credit-card-lent minimum-payment rent, feel the hot blast of frustration vent, or catch your dreams in the big big tent, while ignoring those who’re dropping hint. 

100 Years earlier:

   One morning Duke ran into his old acquaintance, Asa Lemlein, on a Columbus Avenue car, and told him he was thinking of backing the Whelan brothers in further expansion of their (United Cigar) stores. 

   “How do you think it will work out?” asked Duke.

   “Not very well,” replied Lemlein. “My partner and I are having troubles enough with two stores and here you are thinking of opening two thousand. I think it would be a mistake, Mr. Duke.”

   Duke grinned, then he snorted: “A mistake, eh? Lemlein, let me tell you something. I’ve made mistakes all my life. And if there’s one thing that’s helped me, it’s the fact that when I make a mistake I never stop to talk about it--I just go ahead and make some more.”  ***

And he did too. From bulling his way through American commerce to assemble the largest tobacco empire in the world, to initiating  a company that would later become a mega-corporation for production of electrical power, to founding a great University, to. . . his successors reading  the Surgeon General’s report, Smoking can be hazardous to your health. . .

People do amazing things. Some special ones build great empires of wealth that enrich and sustain thousands or millions of other people for long periods of time. But human beings make mistakes too, no matter how big they are, no matter how small, now matter how important they are, no matter how insignificant. The big ones make big mistakes, the little ones make theirs too.  The big banks make bad loans; the US Treasury makes bad choices based on worse choices. It will be a long time before this ill wind blows down.

Deal with it.

But remember this:  Life is not about what the bankers did, or the Fed or the Congress. It’s not about the subprime sand gangrene greed upon which the derivative foundation of  the house of credit defaut cards came carte-blanching down while the world watched and the internet buzzed. No, life is not about that.

 What’s the notional value of your life?  That’s for you to determine. Life, for you, is about what  you  do.

Be careful out here in the wild wild west. Be careful who you follow. Make good choices and maybe everything will click together for you. 

***excerpt from: Tobacco Tycoon: the Story of James Buchanan Duke, by John K. Winkler. Random House; New York, 1942 

Carey Rowland, author of Glass half-Full