The Facts of Life

When I was growing up, whenever I heard adults use the term, the “Facts of Life” I knew they were talking about the birds and the bees.  But I’m no longer a kid, I’m circling eighty and with a few decades of experience I’ve come to realize the term really refers to the fundamental truths and realities about life, including practical wisdom, biological realities, and societal norms.

For example, all living beings are born, live, and eventually die; everyone grows older and experiences physical and mental changes and that the body is susceptible to disease, and maintaining good health requires care.  Those are hard facts and cannot be debated.  Life has also taught me that actions have consequences, i.e., what we do will impact our own life as well as others.  It’s also a fact that life isn’t always fair, and hard work doesn’t always guarantee success, and that luck frequently plays a role.  I’ve come to realize too, that happiness comes from within and while external factors can bring temporary joy, true happiness is internal.

It took a few hard lessons to accept the fact that we cannot control everything; some things in life are simply beyond our power to control and learning to adapt is key.  I also believe failure is a part of success and that mistakes and setbacks are normal steps toward achieving our goals.  Another eye-opening realization was that not everyone is going to like me, it’s impossible to please everyone, and that’s okay.  At the same time, trust is hard to earn and easy to lose, which is why honesty and integrity matter in relationships.  And at the risk of sounding trite, wealth may bring comfort, but it does not guarantee happiness.

Meanwhile, at this ripe old age, it’s become abundantly clear that time is limited and how well we use our time will determine our quality of life.  And if we’re wise, we also understand that learning should be a lifelong process, not something that ends with the completion of schooling.  And perhaps most importantly, that relationships require effort; love, friendships, and family bonds need to be nourished with communication and genuine caring, and there are only two predicates for long-term viable relationships – admiration and respect, which are more than just ‘qualities, they are states of mind, emotions and responses that reflect how we perceive and value others.

And lastly, while there are many, the two most important ‘political facts of life’ in 21^st century America are 1) there are no coincidences in politics and 2) the democrats do not want Donald Trump to succeed at anything – they don’t want him to…

• Fix the economy
• Reduce the bloat and fraud in government,
• Secure our border,
• Deport people who have no right to be here, including Tren de Aragua, as we are currently witnessing, and
• They certainly don’t want to see him end the Ukraine War, begging the question of why.

The answer isn’t complicated, the democrats don’t want Trump to win on any of these issues because it will reveal how the bankrupt policies of the Left and of the Biden & Obama administrations in particular, have failed miserably.  And let’s not kid ourselves, the specter of Barack Obama lies behind every concession Joe Biden made to men in women’s sports, illegal immigration, DEI at every turn, and the antisemitism we’ve seen on college campuses that’s occurred during the last four years.

Most tragically however, this fight “Trump at-every-turn mentality” also extends to the war in Ukraine, because if Trump succeeds in ending that war, the glaring incompetence and ineptitude of democrat policies during the last four years will be on full display for the entire world to see.  That the democrats and the Left don’t want to be  exposed is understandable, but I will never understand why they have chosen these particular hills to die on.

Quote of the day: “Everyone knows that getting rid of the deficit will require some tough decisions, and that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about…just as  families are living within their means, government should too.” – Barack Obama, 2011