Taxes

A less arresting title for a weblog entry I can hardly imagine. And yet, it is one of those things that compels my attention from year-to-year. I finished my taxes yesterday and really didn’t feel badly about them even though I had to pay out a sizable sum. Why do I not feel put upon? Let me explain.

I am an American. A moment’s reflection reminds one that citizenship comes with a price. A clause in the Constitution notes that government exists, in part, to “promote the general welfare,” an economic as well as a social connotation. Government cannot promote, or more accurately provide, without revenue. My welfare is promoted by the services that are provided for and used by me every day. I’m glad there are roads upon which I can drive, stop lights and traffic laws and road crews to repair the potholes. I’m glad for police and fire protection, national defense, radio and television signals, air traffic control, dams and sanitation services, bridges, public health services and basic education for myself and family. I do not resent paying my fair share for these benefits.

Since we all are beneficiaries of these facilities and services I am in favor of a flat personal income tax (with very limited deductions) for all Americans capable of earning a living. I am also in favor of ‘use’ taxes for consumer items and of what used to be called ‘sin’ taxes. The so-called ‘sin’ tax revenues (on things like tobacco, alcohol, maybe even things like obesity-promoting foods) can be well-used for the medical treatment that is inevitably needed for these users. The reality, I have read, is that a huge percentage of Americans pay no income tax at all—and these are not the mega-rich as the media would have us believe. It is the low to low-middle income individuals and families who take and enjoy the benefits but make no contribution whatsoever to their own welfare or maintenance.

If we have an investment in our own maintenance we will not, if we have any integrity, take these blessings as American citizens as an entitlement (we used to say ‘for granted’) and will better learn, it is hoped, that there is a price to be paid for all benefits. Somebody will pay. The moral question we must all ask ourselves is, ‘Is it right that I should be the beneficiary of benefits that are provided for me by money that is extorted from others beyond what is their fair share contribution for the general welfare or public good?”

I believe in paying our own way, contributing fairly to the public good and then being charitable to others, without being compelled to be, out of the dictates of our own conscience.

Amounting to Something

A recent prophet of God, Gordon B. Hinckley, wrote a book not long before he died, titled 'Standing for Something.' I like that title. A related notion, though I’ve never seen a book with this title, could be 'Amounting to Something.' I remember, as a kid, hearing my dad say something like, ‘if he would apply himself he could amount to something,’ and ‘he’ll never amount to anything.’ If so, how? If not, why not?

I have though a lot about standing for something and amounting to something. A good and continuing education can help with both.

To become educated, we must surrender ignorance. To move forward we often undertake a course of study and yield to teachers who are probably wiser and certainly better educated than we are. When we pay money to go to school we usually don’t balk over the process. When we go to a physician to get healed we usually submit to the treatment. Yet when we are encouraged to voluntarily engage in practices that could help us in our quest to ‘amount to something’ we often do not fully engage ourselves or invest ourselves or discipline ourselves to ‘go the course’ or take the medicine. We may get distracted from our goal, or resent the expectations of our guide or mentor or maybe just get lazy. Self-improvement, for many, is hard to sustain.

Let me suggest that if you want to ‘amount to something’ more than you currently are, you don’t continue to go it alone. Make a contract with another person (or better yet, a covenant) that will make you accountable and then resolve to ‘endure to the end.’ Check in periodically for ‘progress reports.’ Engage another person in the pursuit of your quest. Don’t be afraid of correction along the way. Even the best of athletes, musicians, performers and presidents have coaches, mentors, and advisers to help them.

Here is a favorite metaphor that illustrates this, by a favorite author, C. S. Lewis:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage; but He is building a palace. He in intends to come and live in it Himself.” (Mere Christianity, Book IV, chapter 9)

If we can come to a belief that we are a child of God, a child of Royal birth, that He wants us to ‘amount to something,’ and that He wants to help us in the school of our mortality, even though some of the courses and tests may be hard, then there’s no telling what great things that can be done with our lives. He can make much more of us than we ever could on our own. If we don’t believe that, then we’ve got a problem with pride.

Usually before we rebuild we must tear down or clean out. In investment language it is called divestiture; in religion it is called repentance.

As a bumper-sticker stated: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Family Matters

Take the title of this piece either way; I believe strongly in both.

As I have reviewed the titles of the nearly 150 weblog entries I have written in the past 21 months or so I am surprised that I have not written specifically about fathers and families. I have always taken my role as a father very seriously and family certainly does matter. For today’s thoughts let me suggest some things pertaining to fathering that I strongly believe in.

• For a man, being a good father is a great honor and the greatest of all responsibilities. And perhaps the best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. Love at home is the best gift, the best memory, and the best inheritance a child can receive.

• There will never be a journey as important as the one that takes you home. Spend as much time as you can with your family in the knowledge that they will be the only ones that will still be yours when your career is over. The greatest work you will ever do is within the walls of your own home.

• I have learned (a few times by sad experience) that all you’ve really got to do to help your children see themselves as being of great value is to praise them. Sometimes we are too critical and too impatient. They need a promoter, not a critic. Be a positive undistorted mirror for them.

• Almost anything your children get to do with you when you are in a good mood is fun for them—even if it is work. The children are always more important than the activity. If you really want to get work out of them then be with them while they are doing it and work with them.

• Give your children time to talk with you. That means, do more listening than talking whenever possible. Take the time to let them get to what is really on their mind. They set the agenda.

• Teaching doesn’t mean teaching lessons or ideas; it means teaching people.

• Save your best and friendliest behavior for home.

• Let your children know you love them. Tell them in spoken words. Tell them also in notes or letters some times. But tell them often.

Charity suffereth long and is kind. Charity never faileth—especially at home.

The Desiderata of Happiness

I have had a copy of this prose/poem by Max Ehrmann (1927)in my possession for years. I think it makes a good contribution to my 'wisdom' literature. I hope you enjoy it as I have.

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Second Readings

As I read, I invariably mark up the book I am reading. If you likewise do that, think with me for a moment about what you are doing. You are reading the material once, then you go back and highlight the interesting or important part—that’s reading number two, which reinforces your first reading—and you do this with the idea in mind that you will someday revisit the book and at least review your original highlights because they were important to you. That will be reading number three.

I have found this practice to be very valuable for me as I study. It is also of value to me in more casual reading because it allows me to easily find and enjoy once again the highlighted material.

If we go through life and visit something that is interesting to us only once, I think we miss a great deal. I always learn something more on repeat readings. That is why religious people are encouraged to read the scriptures, for example, over and over because of the new insights that invariably come.

And the principle is shown to be sound in other areas of our life. What if we kissed our loved-one only once and let it go at that? Or what if we played golf at a good golf course only once, or took a vacation to a great get-away spot only once, or enjoyed the company of a new friend and then never saw him/her again?

I pity those who never get past a ‘first reading.’ I pity more those who never read at all. As I told my children when they were young: A person who does not read does not have much of an advantage over one who cannot read.

Reading lets you experience other ideas, other lives. Rereading keeps them with you.

Our Circumstances

I have a favorite story that I have told on a number of circumstances that I would like to share with you. I heard it from Jeffrey R. Holland nearly forty years ago during my first summer session at Brigham Young University.

Louis Agassiz, a famous scientist of the 19th Century, gave a lecture in London.
After the lecture a little old lady came up to him in the receiving line and said to him, rather resentfully and spitefully, that he spoke well because he had all the advantages in life but that the poor or average person had few of the opportunities he had to learn what he knew and that he better appreciate it.

After taking this dressing down he asked her, “And what do you do in life?”

She said she and her sister ran a boarding house and that she was the cook. He then said, “And where do you do your work?” She thought that was a stupid question and said, “In the kitchen, of course, while standing on the floor.”

“And what is the material of your floor, Ma’am?”

“Glazed brick.”

“Have you ever wondered what is a glazed brick?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. Well, here’s my card. Write me a note when you have time and tell me what is a glazed brick.”

Well, that made her mad enough to go home and do it. She consulted a dictionary and found that a glazed brick was a piece of baked clay. Realizing that wasn’t enough to send to a renowned Harvard-trained naturalist she consulted an encyclopedia and got more information. Her curiosity piqued, she next went to a brick factory and a tile maker. Then she went deeper into the library and consulted the history and geology sections to find out more about clay and clay beds. She finally decided there were over 120 different kinds of bricks and glazed tiles. She could tell Professor Agassiz that, so she wrote him a note of over thirty pages and said, “Here’s your glazed brick.”

He wrote back. “This is a fine piece of work. If you change this and that and the other, I’ll prepare it for publication and send you that which is due you from the publication.” She made the changes, thought no more of it, and was surprised when a check for $250 came for her in the mail. His attached note said, “I’ve published your piece. What was under the brick?”

She wrote back and said, “Ants.”

He wrote back: “What’s an ant?”

“She went to work and this time she was excited. She found 1825 different kinds of ants. She found that there were ants so small that you could put three to the head of a pin and still have plenty of room left over. She found that there were ants an inch long that moved in armies half a mile wide and destroyed everything in their path. She found that some ants were blind; some milked cows and shared it with other ants. She found more ants than anybody had ever found so she wrote Dr. Agassiz something of a treatise, numbering 360 pages. He published it and sent her the money and royalties, which continued to come in.”

The moral? A previously poorly educated and previously short-visioned and unchallenged boarding house keeper had discovered a new life. [With this new source of income and expertise], says Dr. Holland, “she saw the lands and places of her dreams on a little carpet of vitrified kaolin [which is what a brick is] and on the wings of flying ants that may lose their wings on the afternoon they die.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, ten-stake fireside address at Brigham Young University, June 2, 1974)

How many people who are unemployed or underemployed in today’s difficult times might be challenged to do something similar? Probably thousands.

An Offender for a Word

I am offended that the source for truth so many rely upon (our public media) seems to be in the business of obscuring truth by the methods they use. In an interview with a media mogul that I listened to last evening on NPR the guest candidly admitted that “we emphasize conflict” and that they “pump up” issues that can cast the issue or political candidate in a certain light to fit their corporate bias. The media, of course, piously tout their ‘fact checkers’ but the significance of the assertions they choose to check is largely a sham. They shine the spotlight on one thing to take the focus off of something else.

Take, for example, the issue the media (and some candidates such as Newt Gingrich) made of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comment a week or so ago that he (Romney) wasn’t too worried about the “poor” in our society. If you listened to the rest of the sentence, Mr. Romney said he wasn’t too concerned, either, about the rich—that both classes had structures in place to deal with their concerns. What he was trying to emphasize was the plight of the unemployed middle class in America. Context was ignored by the media in favor of highlighting a hot-button word or phrase.

In my youth I had an English class that used as its text a book titled “Language in Thought and Action” with a chapter, as I recall, titled ‘Ideas in Context’ by professor and later U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa . Without remembering much about specifics of the book, the title made a great impression upon me. He said, “Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue.”

Who among the actors on the current political stage might fit that description?

We must keep ideas, statements, even behaviors in context and be slow to judge others without first considering the context or frame of reference of the actor. We must be careful of adopting these approaches ourselves.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah thundered “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord and their works are in the dark…surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay…for the terrible one [i.e., the critic shall be] brought to nought, and the scorner [will be] consumed and all that watch for iniquity [without just cause will be]cut off; that make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him…and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.” (Isaiah 29:15-16, 20-21).

Beware of ‘spin doctors.’