Last Wish #01 … Replacing hatreds with Kindness (03/18/14)

All things considered, I am a pretty happy guy with a pretty positive outlook on life. Yes, the injustices & cruelties that still pervade our society still grate me to the Core … and yes, there are times when I wonder if we humans are ever going to wake UP to a way of living […]

Last Wish #02 … Less comfort, more Health (03/17/14)

Here’s a novel idea:  replace ceaselessly striving for comfort with effortlessly living in Health. As far as I am concerned, doctors should be paid when we are well, and should treat us all for free whenever we are sick or injured. Of course, at least in the Western world, this dream is highly unlikely to […]

Last Wish #03 … Stop smoking; start Living (03/16/14)

The main reason I want you to stop smoking is because I LOVE YOU and don’t like seeing you commit a willful, slow suicide. Your brilliant and Beauty-filled life is already so short & so priceless, and it is a shame to see you wasting so much of it by inhaling death every day. That […]

Last Wish #04 … Love our Earth (03/15/14)

It is high-time we choose to replace “taking care of ourselves” with actively Caring for our planet. Let’s face it — our Earth is in pretty sad shape. Its forests are dwindling, its polar ice is melting, its wildlife is disappearing, its air is being polluted and its waters are being poisoned … and, due […]

Last Wish #05 … Forgive your enemies (03/14/14)

To say that I would like you to forgive your enemies is a bit too simplistic and far too unclear.  For there are several forms of Forgiveness — all of them peaceful; all of them potent — and all of them wished for with this, my fifth “last breath”. First, there is the Forgiveness that […]

Last Wish #06 … Rebuilding Community (03/13/14)

“The community, in its fullest sense: a place and all its creatures, is the smallest unit of real Health” ~ Wendell Berry     As times change, they bring with them challenges ever more potent, and therefore ever more frightening.  These days the average citizen is no longer only afraid of random acts of violence […]

Last Wish #07 … Replacing religion with Respect (03/12/14)

(or, “Replacing all arrogant piousness with humble Prayer”) I always find it especially intriguing how Christians will so often so zealously defend certain passages of their Bible, while so casually discounting or even completely ignoring others. Take the following passage from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” as a prime example of the latter: “And whenever […]

Last Wish #08 … Redefining Wealth (03/11/14)

It is indeed true that the Bible says that it is the adoration of money, and not money itself, that is the root of all evil. And to the degree that this statement itself is also true, it would seem that merely earning money — or having money, or spending money, or even “prudently” saving […]

Last Wish #09 … Replacing Weapons with Well-Being (03/10/14)

(or, “Less guns, and more Goodness” … or, “Less rifles, and more Righteousness”) I currently live in western Europe, where this particular wish is really not necessary to utter. After all, there is no need to fix what isn’t broken, and gun violence is simply not a problem in my country of residence (Germany) or […]

Last Wish #10 … Trounce your Television (03/09/14)

According to 2013 data, over 99% of American households contain at least one television (65% of them have three or more), and every person in those households watches — on average — over 5 hours of television EVERY DAY. And the United States is not alone. Other countries have succumbed to the scourge of TV […]

Last Wish #11 … Be Kind to Animals (03/08/14)

My last “last wish” — my “Wish of all Wishes”is simply this:  That you begin to treat animals as though they are equally worthy of Life (because THEY ARE).  That’s right, even if you were to ignore all my previous ten pleas — even if I were on my deathbed and had only one wish […]