As I write this the temperature is zero degrees Fahrenheit outside. I have 33 cents in cash and a snowed in car. In spite of the not so balmy weather, and the great wealth I have with me; I have a lot of reasons to smile. You do too.
First, I’ve been making t-shirt designs promoting freedom and love. People like my designs! That makes me smile. Not only will it help me pay the bills but the shirts will promote good things during a time of cancel culture and tribal political hatreds.
I am also smiling because I am not living outside in frigid temps. SO grateful for that! We need to do what we can for those who find themselves in that situation.
Also I am smiling about the positive people in my life. Take a look. This is just a small sample.
I am SO rich in the people with whom I’ve shared my life.
What we think affects our emotions. If I focused on my present isolation I couldn’t be grateful for my friends and family. If I focused on zero temperatures I wouldn’t be grateful for the coming beauty.
San Juan Mountains, Colorado
Munchkin pets
So no matter my temporary situation, I can always find reasons to smile. I hope you will as well.
The opportunity to be offended is evidence you live in a free country. In a large country full of diverse people the only way to get rid of all the things and people that offend you would require taking their freedoms or getting rid of them entirely. In other words, you become a little tyrant. Freedom from offense is NOT in the constitution.
Freedom requires courage. A fearful people will not stay free. They will not have the courage to say what needs to be said or to that which should be done. They will give away their freedoms to governments, oligarchs, and other “experts”. They will let others think for them. If you give up the freedom to think for yourself all other freedoms are in danger.
Freedom requires independence. The more we are dependent on others the more our freedom is vulnerable to their wishes, their values. We must decide how dependent we want to be on governments, big businesses, and social media oligarchs. What freedoms are worth some inconvenience? Doing for ourselves is not the easiest route…in a time of convenient dependency. We must think about it if we are to be, at least, semi-free.
Freedom requires morality. Immoral people will not remain free. By their actions, they will require restrictions. As evil grows legal remedies grow and freedoms shrink. Only moral people will be responsible with their freedom. A person who would not kill needs no law forbidding it. Laws should be for the lawless not unreasonable restrictions on the moral. But by nature most laws are restrictive. Only moral people need few external restrictions on their freedoms. The fewer restrictions needed the more free people can be.
Freedom requires tolerance towards people unlike you. Only a belief that all in a society should have basic freedoms will keep a society free. If you believe that people who are not just like you should not be free then you have a problem. Because no one is exactly like you.
Freedom requires more thought and responsibility than we are giving it. BE FREE.
This post is a little different. I want my friends and followers to know the things I am doing and why. Readers of this blog, TIM’S POSITIVE PLACE, know that my purpose here is encouragement, positive input in a less than positive world.
I have another blog, TIM’S BLESSING BLOG, which is for my Christian readers. It, too, is a place of encouragement…and of Christian education. Christians have so much more to be positive about thanks to our Savior. www.timsblessingblog.com
So these are my first two ways of promoting light and life. My next three are in the form of business. I design products online. These designs have messages. These are products with purposes. Because they are business ventures the first PURPOSE is pay the bills, put food on the table…in short to make money. Never trust a business entity that claims YOU are their ONLY concern, they do it ALL for you. They are not being completely honest. The second PURPOSE for these designs is to promote positive values. The third PURPOSE is to support charity with part of my income, in other words give something back.
My third message I voice (through design) is the promotion of love and peace and resistance against anger, bigotry, and hate which binds so many.You’ll find this message in the designs at a Teespring storefront ANTI-HATE CAMPAIGN. We need to get the message out and often designs on t-shirts, hoodies and other merch are great conversation starters. http://www.teespring.com/stores/anti-hate-campaign-2
My next message I voice is a PRO FREEDOM MOVEMENT. It is not a political movement. I am not heading up a movement. Through my designs I am encouraging freedom loving people to support and defend individual freedoms when so many want t take our basic freedoms away. http://www.teespring.com/stores/pro-freedom-movement
My fifth message is to appreciate and support our veterans. Those kinds of designs are found at the storefront Veterans 4 Veterans. www.teespring.com/stores/veterans-4-veterans
I am simply pushing positive into negative space…shining some light in darkness. I would love your support. But more importantly would you support these messages, these causes in any way you can?
When the United States was founded the founders had a radical idea. Their idea was that humans were “born with” rights/freedoms. These were liberties that were not given by royalty or government but were rights with which you were born, given by God.
Of course being creatures of their times it never occurred to most of them that if this was true for them, it was true of black people, native people and women. But freedom has its own call. By codifying this radical idea it opened the possibility of these other groups becoming more and more free…more like they were meant to be.
But there are always enemies to our freedoms. Some have been external and wars were needed to defeat those threats. But you and I must confront a threat here in America. It is the threat of people who believe people should not be free if they do not agree with them.
Let us call that the New Feudalism. Feudalism was a system in the middle ages that was headed by the ruling class, usually a king. The rulers decided the rights and freedoms of the people, often depending on their service and obedience to them.
In our country right now there are voices backing the same kind of elitism. They believe you and I are not smart enough or responsible enough to determine our own thoughts, our own speech, our own worship, our own politics without their control.
This is not about political parties. This is about freedom. These are individual freedoms and they must be defended and exercised by THE PEOPLE in each generation. People who would take away your freedoms are your enemies no matter what their argument may be.
We sing that we are the land of the free. Perhaps, semi-free would be more accurate. You can hardly do anything from owning property or starting a business without some kinds of government control. We are so used to it we don’t even think anything of it.
We need government and not all restrictions are evil. I am not calling for anarchy but a return to the idea that as a free people we control our freedoms and we control our representatives. We are NOT to serve them. We are not to give up our rights. Read the first ten amendments to our constitution. They are not there to give rights and freedoms. They are there to guarantee that the government guards those freedoms.
Your enemy cannot be seen as blue or red. Some in both parties do not believe we should be free unless you bow the knee. in other words give up your freedom of thought and speech for theirs. Fortunately most Americans want freedom. Let people know.
I designed some shirts and my friends and I will be wearing them as conversation starters. If you want to join us you can buy them at http://www.teespring.com/stores/pro-freedom-movement There is a link below.
Whatever you decide to do be sure you defend the other person’s freedom too.
He dreamed that the day would come when, in America, persons would be judged by their character not the color of their skin. It is is GOOD dream. If you are older like me and remember those times, you know the tremendous progress that has taken place. Younger and poorly educated folk don’t have that advantage.
So many people paid incredible dues for that progress. The movement to judge people by their color is a betrayal of all the sacrifices that have been made…the exact opposite of the dream which so many of us have prayed and worked.
The good news is that most Americans are smarter than that. We know that color or ethnicity does not guarantee either good or poor character. And most of the folks I know respect or love persons of a color different from their own.
Today take some time and find the I Have a Dream speech on YouTube or elsewhere. It still moves me. Just because politicians use racism to get votes; just because those who misbehave use racism as an excuse: there is no reason the rest of us can’t see things clearly and keep the dream alive.
We like our sports. Some LOVE sports. It is great to watch trained and talented individuals exhibit athletic excellence. Sports are fun to do and to watch as entertainment. And we can all list some great talents and great moments. We count on there being more.
As fans we can have a healthy appreciation of the talent and effort displayed. But some people fall into ditches about sports. In one ditch you find people who want to give participation trophies and are really against competition, because if someone wins someone has to lose.
The other ditch is filled with those for whom winning is not the main thing but the only thing. To be one of these people you have to disregard the thousands of hours of great entertainment each year that were produced by all those who did not win it all. Some trade the love for the games for the love of backing the winner. If I follow a team that gives me great entertainment but doesn’t win a championship , should that lessen my appreciation of the skill and effort of the team? We all want to win we all want to back winners. But in the end sports is an entertainment. We should enjoy and give credit when we are entertained.
Favorites. We probably all have favorite athletes. We should appreciate them for their skills. But to take life, religious, or political advice from these people that we do not know personally just because the can put a golf ball in the cup, or hit a home run, or make a slam dunk, or throw a touchdown, or serve an ace in tennis, etc is dumb.
Appreciate athletes as experts at what they do. Don’t take them too seriously about matters in which they are not experts. As a matter of fact that goes for any expert. Academic experts can be the same as athletic experts. Some of them feel because of their limited expertise they can tell others how to think and how to live.
This is how you get to be an expert. You work and focus on your area to the exclusion of the others. The focus is necessary to get a PhD or to become a world class athlete. But in the whole ocean of knowledge of knowledge and skills of an expert is a drop of water in an ocean.
Enjoy your sports and follow your favorite athletes. I will. Just do it in a healthy way.
We have seen an election season of dishonesty, censorship,betrayal, and disappointments. What now? Do we wallow in our disappointments or do get up go on making our worlds better?
In this information age it is easy to find things that anger us. But only some of those things can we do something about. We sometimes feel if we are not outraged or involved at every level we do not care. That is not true. You and I cannot fix all the wrongs in our society.
We must work on our parts of the world. We must be responsible to work for positive change in our families, in our friendships, in our churches, in our communities. There is no “easy button” that can fix social and political ills. Only courage dedication and hard work by us will improve our lives.
Choose to work to protect freedom. Work to promote love and peace not hatred and anarchy.
If we learned anything we have learned that we cannot depend on politicians to do the right thing. We must do the right things and become as independent as we can. There will always be some dependence and interdependence but as much as possible we must depend on God and ourselves.
Be good. Be kind. Believe that what YOU do makes a difference.
2020 was quite a year. We’ve had a pandemic, lock downs, contested elections, and many other challenges. So what have we learned? I’ll just speak for myself.
I have learned that certain political officials, when given power get a little power mad. I have learned that we cannot trust our politicians to do what is best for their voters or the country. I have learned that we cannot trust “experts” to always be right. I have learned that all our election workers and officials are not honest.
Perhaps, I knew these things to be true before but now after 2020 I personally can no longer ignore them. The challenge is to remain positive and respond to lessons learned.
If political officials abused their power during the pandemic they need to be removed. Just a shrug and a cynical “that’s how it is” are no longer sufficient, unless that is the reality in which we wish to live.
If our politicians do not do what is best for the voters and the country they must be made accountable with voter feedback, recalls, and votes in the next election. More working people need to become engaged. It is no longer acceptable to vote and leave everything else to others.
If “experts” are treated as infallible we are foolish. No human is infallible. We need to embrace second opinions and multiple options. We cannot afford herd mentality when dealing with pandemics, news cycles, etc.
The election this November and the evidence of irregularities disappointed me. We should never be so tribal that anything goes as long as our side wins. We need to do what we can to insure fair elections…no matter how the chips might fall.
All of these things are going to force me to be more involved. If we want a better future we need to be better at involvement. Not fun perhaps…but necessary.
This year we’ve learned many things, some positive and some negative. Many of us learned that people who were to represent us didn’t. We found that people who said they’d help us didn’t. We learned that experts are not always so expert. Or did we? Didn’t we know those things from our life experiences? In our day to day lives if a business does not come through as advertised, doesn’t do what it said it would do we simply don’t do business with them anymore. If a doctor gives us a wrong diagnosis we do not go to him/her for future expertise. If we have a so called friend who turns away from us in times of crisis we know not to count on that person in a time of need. So we should use the same logic and actions in regards to our politicians and government agencies.
In short, we need to look to the future as families, churches, and communities being as self reliant as we can. The exposure of faults should not leave us depressed. We should learn from our experiences and accept the challenge: that our future must be shaped by US, not the people or institutions which have let us down.
The future is not 2020. In a large degree that future is what we choose to make it. To make it a good future we must acknowledge what has not worked and with God’s help, courage and faith we move forward making our part of the world better.
Look forward. Knowing that you must be the one that makes your life better.
Tim's Positive Place 