“We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety clouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.”
courtesy https://pixabay.com/photos/abraham-lincoln
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men.
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one.
On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho’ you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest,”
https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/03/quote-for-the-day
– Abraham Lincoln, address to the Washington Temperance Society in 1842.
Seems like since the dawn of man, man has been trying to convince man, to come around to a certain way of his own thinking.
We just passed Thanksgiving, the traditional 9 day gun deer season is closed, and some folks used the mild weather we had recently to get their Christmas lights put up.
It is a funny time of year.
The business of November gives way to the quiet expectations, and slow building of anticipations in December, for the upcoming Christmas morning.
Even my wife and I just finished putting up, and trimming out, our nicest Christmas tree, in our just over, 30 years together.
But being a student of history. Trying to research and learn it, and from it, so that I can be a better writer, I am left with some quiet thoughts on our current political atmosphere.
If the numbers are accurate, for those of us who voted, it seems half are FOR and half are AGAINST…
who ever it is you voted for.
So I am left thinking, using the lens of past history, “Who is correct?”
If half are FOR, and half are AGAINST… then at some point somebody is going to BE left out, FEEL left out, or told to, “GET OUT!”
And it seems like history, both recent, and ancient, shows that those who “win” end up being wolves in sheep’s clothing in the end, regardless.
There are not a lot of stories about countries historically avoiding some type of cataclysmic social shift, that ends up causing all kinds of grief, for the whole country.
And remember… America is still a very young Constitutional Republic, a “grand experiment.” And we already had one upheaval.
And with experiments you can have it… blow up, have it fizzle and fail, have it go inert, or… have a great reaction that leads to more and more awe inspiring discoveries.
I’m left still thinking about where the country will end up.
Me? Lord willing, Christmas eve with my family will find me sitting with my wife, kids, their significant others, and my new baby granddaughter bouncing on my knee.
My heart is a bit melancholy though, like it is sitting on the upswing of a teeter totter… with the world, and individual people and families, stuck on the down swing of life… and no matter how hard I bounce up and down, trying to help them break free… I realize that they outweigh me by quite a lot.
I’m so glad God’s Word says, “He is before all things, and by him all things hold together…” ~ Colossians 1-17
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