I occasionally walk our neighborhood with a couple other gentleman and today was one of those mornings. As I walked, I couldn’t help but notice the things around me. I walked on nice sidewalks, past parks recently mowed, with basketball and pickleball courts (the latest craze, but more on that in a different blog), playgrounds, and sports fields. I saw bike trails, clean tree lined streets, and crews treating the ash trees to save them from the ash bore beetle. If it had been Monday, I would have seen street crews picking up my rubbish.

So who pays for all of this? We do of course. We do that through are real estate taxes and our state and federal income taxes. We live in a great country, because for the most part, we are willing to pay into the cost of providing the services and protections we want, need, and all too often, demand. The problem is determining our “fair” share of that cost.

We are living in an era I dub the War on Taxes. The battlefield is the citizens’ definition of fair. We believe that taxes should be fair but in the same breath state that what my neighbor pays is fair, but that what I pay isn’t. It is a perception war. One political party stands against taxes altogether in a belief that if the wealthiest people were given the chance to pay less in taxes, they would spread the wealth down to the lower classes making their life better through the businesses and jobs they would create. The problem is businesses with the capability of doing this are owned by the shareholders who expect a return on their investment. This often traps the wealth at the top and the trickle down is exactly that, a trickle. Meanwhile, the other party proposes that the lower class needs the services and protections that will help them improve their lot, while the middle class needs a break on taxes so that they can fuel the economy by buying the goods and services the businesses provide. The issue here is that someone else must pay higher taxes to support that system by making up the difference. And the battle rages on. In the last decade or so, that war has begun to divide the country, and, in that divide, other ideologies are given fertile soil to grow and fester.

You and I alone cannot end the war, but we don’t have to continue to fight it. When I was still plying my trade as a tax planner, I would help my clients understand the necessity of the taxes they paid and the good those taxes could do in the hands of leaders who adhere to the practice of making common sense decisions. Decisions that benefit the country not just their position. I do not spend my time calculating the percentage of my income that goes to taxes, nor do I spend my time comparing what I pay to what my neighbor pays. I just pay them knowing that if I vote to elect leaders who will spend those taxes dollars wisely and oppose those leaders that would devote their time to cutting taxes and the programs that go with them, I just might continue to enjoy my morning walks through the streets, trails, and parks that my taxes helped to provide.

Next time you put your garbage and recyclables out to the curb, the next time you play pickleball in the park, or the next time you watch your children and grandchildren play soccer or T-ball on the neighborhood ball fields, ask yourself if it is worth paying your share of the cost? I answered the question for myself long ago. No matter the share I paid, in my mind, it was fair.

I have to go for another walk now, after all I paid for the views and they are worth it. I leave you with a picture of a state park treasure I recently visited, and they didn’t even charge an entry fee. I guess someone else paid for it with their fair share.

I am lazy today, and as a result I have watched New Year’s day roll hour by hour across the globe knowing it will eventually reach me here. I will eventually watch it hit New York, with all its celebration, and then wait for it to hit Chicago and our turn to mark the end of 2022 and welcome the first few seconds of 2023.

I am not one to make resolutions. That way, I don’t have any to break, but I am reflecting on how fast time has moved from the year 2000 to this point. Remember 2000? We stockpiled water, paid to upgrade our computers (I didn’t), and made sure our generators were ready to go at the stroke of midnight. Oh, by the way, nothing happened. In the ensuing two decades plus two, we have cut our landlines, traded cable for streaming, and have more power in our cell phones than the massive computers that got us to the moon and back and better cameras as well. We alternately survived, thrived, suffered, and hung in there through four presidents, swine flu, and Covid-19. The world is definitely not the same as it was back in 1999 when we waited for the clocks to signal a new millennium, borders have changed, technology has changed, and people have changed, but in many ways it is better.

In a few hours as we enter the new year, we can guess what it might bring, but only time will tell. The one thing that is for sure, is that if we can find ways to be more positive and less negative, more forgiving and less judgmental, more accepting and less divisive, 2023 can be a continued improvement over our past. At the stroke of midnight, wherever you are, the new year holds your future and awaits your decisions. Make those decisions the best they can be and trust that the rest of us will join in.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and a blessed 2023. Newness and change are great gifts not to be wasted. 

See less

Edit

1Deb Shepherdwundrow

I don’t know about you, but I for one can’t wait for November 9th. Before you correct me, I know that November 8th is election day. I can’t wait for the day after for two reasons. One, I will hopefully realize that my prayers have been answered, well maybe some of them. And two, that these horrible campaign ads will finally stop invading my spaces; my TV, my phone, my email, my streaming services, and even my game apps. I am tired of being bombarded with fear mongering commercials that play to the darkest regions of my soul where lies my primordial fears and urges. I am worn out trying to stay optimistic in the face of these hateful negative ads. What ever happened to decency when it comes to these attacks on the opponent’s character and for that matter what has happened to campaign promises? I’d actually welcome a few of those promises even if they are unlikely to be kept. Anything is better than the hate messages.

When I was still in my working career as a financial planner, I had to be extremely careful about anything I stated or committed to in writing when it came to describing the delivery of my services. In fact, even if I was careful to be entirely honest, everything still went through compliance where any and all statements were scrutinized for any distortions or false promises. It was common practice and fully expected and respected. My question is, why are these campaign ads not subjected to at least a semblance of compliance? Do the candidates and their third party pacts have no time to check the validity of their statements? Or is it, that truth doesn’t sell when it comes to politics? These ads splice in sound bites that have nothing to do with the issue or are at the very least distorted into half truths. They leave it up to the voter to do the research, case in point, I did a recent lookup on “cash bail” and the reasons behind changing that system. Please take the time to look that one up for yourself. It is enlightening when you choose a neutral site. Here’s the problem with the belief that the voter will do the research, its highly unlikely that they will and the candidate or the supporting pact hopes they don’t. If they did, the scare tactic would lose its impact and the voter might actually stop believing anything the candidate is saying.

So integrity compliance is one issue, but the shear volumes of money thrown at these ads is, in my opinion, a moral crisis. Ask any nonprofit how hard it is for them to raise funds to provide the services that the government can’t afford and they will tell you it is in many cases heartbreaking at best and in some cases the direct cause of their demise. A school system begs for a million dollars in aid so that they can deliver the education the public demands all too often forced to deliver it in aging buildings. Meanwhile, federal and state legislators vote no to the very programs and referendums that would help to level the playing field between the haves and have nots. And all of this, while we the public and all too often the biggest corporations adorn them with campaign war chests that could fund hundreds if not thousands of worthy causes. They then turn around and pour those dollars into the very campaign ads I just railed against.

Here’s my parting thought. What if the requirement that the ads had to be complied by an outside research service actually resulted in the ads never being allowed. The money wouldn’t need to be spent on airing them and maybe we would give our hard earned dollars to better causes. And if the ad was to pass compliance, it might just be forced to rely on information about the candidate and their beliefs rather than the current practice of relying on your ability to paint the other candidate as evil incarnate leaving you, by default, as the only choice I have as a voter. You don’t need to agree with me, but think about it.

The last time I saw a movie in a theater had been almost three years ago. Yesterday, finally, my wife and I returned to the theater for our favorite five buck Tuesday date. We sat, at the edge of our seats, through Top Gun Maverick. It felt good. It felt normal, almost. Remember when this whole Covid-19 thing was going to inconvenience us for a few weeks, maybe a few months at most?

Here we are two and a half years later. Some things are back to normal. Some aren’t. Some might never be. I could say the world has changed, and many will profess that very sentiment, but the truth is we changed. We have changed the way we do so many things. We have changed the processes. Many of us have changed the way we socialize, where we socialize. Most of us have come through this with a different outlook. For some, more positive. For others, more negative.

The pandemic has challenged our perception of freedom. It has made some of us demand our rights, while sadly, being willing to suppress the rights of others. We have always seemed to be a divided nation, but the pandemic seemed to push us even further apart. It seemed to focus our anger and then the isolation seemed to cause us to direct that anger outward, and often at the wrong people.

We have so many issues to deal with as a nation. Equal rights, not just for a few but for everyone, black or white, male or female, gay or straight. Climate change, whether you want to call it global warming or just admit that the climate is in fact being changed by our very behavior, our insatiable desire for everything fast and convenient, for our unwillingness to pay the price of doing it right. For common sense gun laws to protect us from ourselves. And please don’t tell me its the bad guys that have all the guns even as you tell teachers to arm themselves against the next potential attack. Why are we not dealing with these issues? Why are we at the very least, still dragging our feet. How has Congress become so isolated from the reality of who it is they are supposed to represent. When did it become only about the party and the money it took to get them elected? When did they forget that they are supposed to represent us? When did we all get so distracted?

I will not blame everything that’s wrong on the pandemic. It only focused things in an all too often negative light. I will also not blame a lone individual for everything that doesn’t work out my way. I will leave that last one to politicians and their political ads that attack and blame while offering no solutions or the plans needed to implement them. I will, however, hold people responsible for their actions, whether they directly impacted it through their involvement or just incited it by their rhetoric.

The solutions to our nation’s problems, our world’s problem, start with our own actions. If we want equality for all, then let’s start treating each other as equals. Let’s see the person, not their color, their sex, or their religion. And if we want to slow down or maybe even one day stop global climate change, then let’s each agree to do our part. Recycle, reuse, maybe pay a little more for products made with our environment’s well-being in mind. Let’s do business with businesses that take steps to protect the environment. And let’s speak with our votes. If the candidate is living in reality denial, has no solutions, is unwilling to compromise for the good of the nation, for us, then we vote them out. We are far more powerful than we think. And when we act together, we can become a force for change.

It might have been serendipitous that the first movie I saw after that long pandemic break, was one chock full of testosterone, speed, and comradery, but it seems it was the nudge I needed to break out of my latest episode of writer’s block. Just one more step toward normal.

I have had three careers in my life. Each time I had the opportunity to change, I took it. I moved from classroom teacher to business entrepreneur to personal planner. Now I admit that each career had aspects that were very similar, but they were still changes that I decided to embrace. In each and every case, though there was risk involved, the end result moved my families well being forward. In 2017, I retired, sort of. It was not long before I found myself volunteering for an organization that allowed me to mentor other entrepreneurs as they tried to change their business ideas into functioning businesses.

Then in March of 2020, COVID-19 entered our lives and caused some of the greatest change we have had to face in recent times. From my perspective as a business mentor, I had a front row seat to observing businesses as they were forced to adapt to a new way of delivering their products and service. They not only had to change once, in some cases they had to make multiple adaptations as the pandemic held on, let up, and roared back. The pandemic we thought would last three months, now sits poised to enter its third year.

What the pandemic has reaffirmed is not only our ability to adapt, but also our perseverance and yes, our stubbornness. We, as a collective, have a great capacity for making and accepting change. As a country, we also have a tendency to be stubborn. Too often, when change is thrust upon us, some would choose to dig in their heels and refuse to accept it, or at the very least, take the responsibility to do their part to facilitate the necessary change.

I could go down the rabbit hole here and talk about some of the divisive issues that have come out of or because of the pandemic, but I would be trying to change the minds of the stubborn element of our society. I would rather point out the great ability of businesses to adapt to what we all now refer to as our new normal. I would point out how restaurants, who by the way were forced to make the greatest adaptations, overnight switched from in service dining to takeout. But it wasn’t just takeout, it had to be done curb side or by contactless delivery. Others added outside dining to their service and even found ways to continue that well into the fall and in some cases, through the winter. No small task. And then there were the retail sellers who, suddenly finding their indoor capacity reduced or even eliminated as they were forced to close their doors, either created or greatly increased their on-line services. The list goes on as doctors found ways to offer telemedical appointments and virtually every business went to some form of virtual meetings, appointments, and conferences. In short, they adapted the resources available to adjust to new business systems.

Unless you were in hibernation during the last two years, I haven’t told you anything you didn’t likely already observe for yourself. So let me tell you about three businesses I was mentoring and the changes they made to survive and to actually thrive. The first was a retail store. When the pandemic first struck, they were forced to close their doors to the public. Overnight, they rapidly increased their on-line store and added additional products to their website catalogue. But their adaptation didn’t stop there. When they were allowed to reopen to their customers, albeit in very limited store capacity, they went to a boutique model and began scheduling shopping appointments. When last I checked, they were having a record year in sales.

My second business was a real estate agency, who was, prior to the pandemic, in the process of forming her own real estate team. When the pandemic made it obvious that business could not be done in the usual way, she adapted overnight to virtual showings and closings and not only went ahead with her plan to build a team, but thanks to her ability to be adaptive, has realized great success and can now facilitate even more clients in more creative ways.

My final business story, amazed me the most, in that I worried about her business more than any other. She had just started her business assisting clients in decluttering their homes. Her model was to go to the clients home and through a methodical process, categorize their possessions, identify those that needed to go, and then reorganize what remained. When COVID struck, I worried about how her business would survive. When I contacted her, she told me how worried she was at first and then decided she would try a virtual appointment. The client would pile up the clutter from a particular room and my business owner would, on screen, sort the clutter into multiple piles and gradually eliminate the unnecessary from the possible next to go and eventually the pile that would stay but be reorganized. It turns out that doing the process online was less threatening to the client than having the business owner actually come into their home. She received more referrals going forward and her business survived and thrived.

The point of this whole blog is that change is inevitable. It was a pandemic this time, but what will it be next time. Businesses adapt or die. Because they know this, the promising businesses plan ahead. In every case, businesses that want to survive, have found ways to continue in manners that keep the public safe. It is individuals that struggle far more. We resist change until there is no other choice than to accept it. It is obvious that the pandemic has changed our life styles over the last two years. The reality, is that many of the ways we did things will not return. We simply must adapt. Many have done their part. Others, have not. I felt that there was no better time to press my point than on New Year’s Day when every year we are offered a reset. I intend to not only accept change, but to embrace it and do what I can to facilitate it. I will do what I need to keep people around me safe by being conscious of their well being, even when that requires a little sacrifice on my part. And finally, by doing my part, I will look forward to 2022 being a little better than 2021 and a lot better than 2020.

Just the other day we were returning from our trip up to the family cottage. Having stopped at the Big M for a treat, my daughter asked Jackson if he could wish something for the earth what would it be? Jackson never hesitated in his response, “I would wish that cars and all engines stop using gas. It makes global warming and that is bad for the earth. And someday that will be bad for me.”

Jackson is seven. Think about that. He doesn’t question the science. He doesn’t ignore the obvious and at seven he wants to do something about it. I could only marvel at his response and at the same time wish that some of our leaders could be half as wise as he was in that moment. His generation will inherit the actions we take and at present, we still resist. We balk at the changes required because we think of the effect on jobs and even more so the cost. But I will tell you that our inactivity will cost far more in the future, provided that in the future we even have the option.

We must take responsibility for what we have done. My generation is guilty of ignoring the warnings, of not making the effort to be even a little more responsible with our choices, of electing leaders with our wallets instead of our ethics. We must be far more serious about recycle, reclaim, and reuse practices. We must, simply put, ACT. And we must do it before it is too late.

We owe it to our children, to our grandchildren. I don’t want Jackson asking me ten years from now why I hadn’t done anything when I knew it was my responsibility and not that of a seven year old who doesn’t even have a vote. It is not too late. From the mouths of our children comes a plea to save the earth. We must save it so that they might have a future filled with all the bounty we have enjoyed. Do it for Jackson and all the Jacksons so that their wish may still come true.

The title refers to a military tactic. If you want the upper hand in a battle, you divide the enemy, militarily or culturally. We have become a nation, thanks to an election and a pandemic, that is ideologically divided. My question is, are we willing to work on a repair or will we accept being divided and conquered?

Over the past decade, our government has become fractured. As of the last several years, it has been reduced to you are a conservative or you are a liberal. The result of this fracturing is a two party system that for the most part does not represent the general population that elected them and at the very least has become an ineffective governing body. Now some may argue that Congress still passes legislation, but the legislation is along party and unfortunately, money lines. The art of compromise for the good of the nation seems absent.

Meanwhile, we as citizens and voters, are becoming polarized. Thanks to social media, we get our news from everywhere and anywhere and we feel free to verbalize our opinions as beliefs we expect others to adopt. We are losing our civility at a time when it is needed more than ever. The pandemic taught us what isolation felt like. Some embraced it while others grew angry, looking for someone to blame. The election embroiled us in a nasty national conversation, further fueling our anger and grief. The end result, is a division that grows wider with each angry social media confrontation and every too hastily shared meme or post. We are divided and ready to be conquered. In this battle, the enemy is not always obvious, not even some other country or ideology. The enemy is us. How wide do we leave this division grow before the distance between is too far to ever cross.

We must get back to spending more time listening TO each other than the amount of time we spend talking AT each other. The vast majority of Americans are not simply one side or the other. We hold some beliefs that are conservative while we hold others that are liberal. The truth is we are moderates caught in a struggle to make us one or the other, leaving us no ground in the middle. But the solution is simple, we begin to listen. We get back to respecting our differences. We stop claiming that everything is political. It is only political when we use arguing our causes as an excuse for not listening. Politicians make issues political, we do not have to. I fear that if we leave party politicians to steer us, we will not be able to get back to any kind of normal.

Let’s put the election behind us. Let’s leave the pandemic to history. Let’s get back to civilized discussions about what comes next and what positive role we can play. We must seek to choose leaders at all levels, who recognize the need for rational discussions on what they as leaders and we as a people can do to solve the litany of problems that face our nation. We must make our decisions based on humanity and not politics. Choose to listen for our commonalities so that we can respect our differences. Let us choose unified and stronger over divided and conquered.