The Great Comfy Chair

The Classical Greek historian Hesiod once wrote “Without Strife, there can be no Greatness”. Hesiod wrote in a time when the Ancient World was striving to recover from the greatest collapse in all human history. War, famine, environmental devastation, economic ruin and societal dislocation had left the Mediterranean Basin, the Fertile Crescent and much of the surrounding realms a shadow of what it had been during the glories of the Bronze Age. But despite near catastrophe, peoples were rising out of the ashes and climbing slowly but doggedly towards a new birth of splendor during the Golden Ages of Greece and Rome. It is a lesson from our distant past that isn’t all that strange or inaccessible. The Modern World recovered almost miraculously from The Great War, the Great Depression and the Second World War in the 20th Century to see the unparalleled achievement and prosperity that we enjoy today. But has the cost of our success brought about the potential for a new disaster? Do we stand at the brink of a dark chasm created from the wealth and comfort that we now enjoy? The most likely answer is a resounding YES!
It has often been stated that life is a journey, not a destination. Too often people are focused on getting somewhere, getting some thing or just getting past a place where they are without understanding a very clear principal. The basic premise in existence is that life is filled with challenges and difficulties. Each and every day brings its obstacles and every year has its fiery trials. People often look at problems and forget that troubles great and small are the very essence of the mosaic of life. Bad times help us to appreciate the good moments in life and savor them. Great tests, even disasters cause evolution to kick into high gear. But FAR more important than that is the lessons, the strength, the resourcefulness and the tenacity that tribulations of all types help to grow in us. Instead of trying to avoid problems or quickly move past them, it is the very quintessence of being human when we discover strategies and assimilate skills that pertain to how to solve problems. The failure of today, beyond our overly comfortable existence that has weakened our spirits, our resolve and inner fortitude, we have forgotten all the lessons of our cultural past that helped us move from one dogged fight to the next and be stronger for it.
The 1930s saw one of the greatest catastrophes strike the United States and the World, the Great Depression. It is a chapter of history that has become as ancient to modern Americans as the stories of the Pilgrims and yet people like me, whose parents were youngsters during the Depression, grew up on its stories and had its lessons passed on to us.