Just listening to a brand new Neil Young release “The Visitor”,  one of the best truth teller song writers, at least, of my times.  Kind of funny how our age sometimes re-focuses on the perception of truth and reality.  One of the great tunes on this release is “Change of Heart”

I have had the fortune of seeing Mr. Young and his band Promise of the Real several times in the last few years.  Might I suggest that these shows are affirmations of exactly what is possible in our lives.  Songs that make me think are the ones I remember.

Lies aren’t really nothing but a road to nowhere, just a story with your name engraved on it.

As I have watched the 24 hour news cycles over the past few months I have overdosed on the reality concerning not only some of our elected officials, but the multitude of sexual predatory issues being put on display daily.  As we watch a celebrities being outed for sexual inappropriateness in the workplace and the outrage of  public reaction, I can only say really?  Did you just figure this out?  First time you ever heard of the casting couch?

While I am also a little shocked, I can’t say I’m that surprised.  With a real examination of our own selves, how many people can say they are not somewhat also complacent in this debacle of sexual  or other abuse of others?  To many different degrees, hopefully the lesser, these events will act as a wakeup call for many people in positions of power.  That power might be in media or other workplaces from the top all the way to the fast food industry and everything in-between.

If you can accept that this has been occurring since Adam and Eve, then you can also realize this.  Many people who can,  and do,  accomplish good, if not great things, also have a past.  Do some of these past things include indiscretions driven by human desires and wants?  These desires are sadly part of the food chain of life.  Predators and victims, like lions and sheep.  Have at least some of these predators become productive members of society?  Do you hate the lion because they ate the animal a little further down the food chain?

We all have choices to make.  I believe this “light of day” can simply illuminate the issue and help alleviate the resulting problems.  To act so shocked that this has and is happening might then show that maybe you are the naive one in this equation.  We all have choices to make, the give and take of life, the yin and yang, right and wrong, the analogies go on and on.

Do these same truths carry on to affect our environment, health care, political climate and just about every life choice?

When I was younger I made a decision to focus on accumulating wealth and power thru owning and operating a business.  That decision has left myself and my wife with enough funds to live our life at will, going where we want and when we want.

Amassing  possessions and all that is alright, but as the end of my days approach a Change of Heart starts to make more sense.  All beit a needed change of heart and attitude ?  I truly wish I had refocused on things that actually matter a little earlier in my life.   That said, I do not regret accumulating wealth as to free myself, my wife or my children from worrying about my financial destiny.  The alternative is to wish and whine about how society owes us everything?

Listening to endless bitching about our elected officials, corporate America, those people who actually accumulate and build their own wealth I am only certain of one true thing.  

Might it be more productive, and positive, for you to focus on what you can do to improve our society.  Can you have a more positive effect on our children and on our society to approach things more positively?  Endless bitching about nearly everything makes you weak and it sadly often makes you the victim.

Now, at age 65, I also feel a Change of Heart concerning not only the workplace, family life and values, our environment and much empathy for the complete diversity of man.  Regardless of our own life quests, my heart tells me that charity begins with our thoughts and our actions.

As Mr. Young said, There is something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.  He also said,

Time don’t mean nothing, it’s the ways you choose.  To go on living inside your house, instead of staying and dying inside, sometimes you move, sometimes you rise Neil Young.