December 2013
SHORT TERM
If you are planning and organizing the effort to travel to Mars, short term may be one or two years. If you are homeless without money, short term is likely to be whatever hours it may take to find a way to get a meal. The vagrant and the executive are carrying out vastly different activities.
Still there are similarities in their behavior:
- each has a goal;
- each needs to make a plan;
- each has to take action;
- each has to determine what resources are available; and,
- each needs the assistance of others.
We simply cannot accomplish much entirely on our own.
Incomes and accumulated wealth in highly developed economies allow many to live under the belief that it is possible to be entirely independent. One need look no further than Germany and the hyperinflation that existed there after the First World War to understand how fragile our societies are. In the end we must cooperate with one another if we want to create and to maintain a world worth living in.
For those of a certain age the time seems very short term since last we heard the call for peace on earth at this time last year. We should listen closely and consider how these words slip so easily from our lips.
As good will creeps into our consciousness we should perhaps ask:
What actions may we take to make peace a reality?
