Elder Advice – Thinking Inside the Box - Week 26
I have determined the “D”s are to blame.
Each week it seems I pose Questions and invite the Answers to come. The invitations are engraved. There is no requirement to BYOB. And still the Answers are not coming, timely or at all. More Questions on the other hand, keep turning up at the door, uninvited. Just like the loud, obnoxious neighbour - the one they call "Lefty". The guy who tried to clean out the wood chipper by hand.
It’s hard to give advice when, like Lefty, things are out of hand.
Everyone seems to want to blame all the current chaos on COVID. And there is some truth in that. But the real culprits are the “D”s: Distraction, Delay, Dithering and Despair. Deal with them and I am certain the Answers will finally show up, no doubt full of apologies and blaming bad directions for being late.
What is urgently needed is as daunting as it is necessary. A firm commitment to equality of opportunity for everyone. A big tent erected by all those who are committed not to stand around and complain or acknowledge pain all day, but to confront issues, devise solutions and act decisively. An understanding that it will not suffice to say that virtue is inconvenient or that doing the right thing was too difficult. That real solutions require sacrifice from everyone, and that mistakes will be made but the greater error is to do nothing.
And that it is not an Answer to burn everything down. If memory serves, they tried that during the French Revolution, and the result was Napoleon. Well ... Napoleon and a country that literally uses more suppositories than the rest of Europe combined.