People important to me are in the late stages of dying. It makes me think about living.

In the dying what I remember is unselfishness, good-heartedness, kindness, unwillingness to give into the mean spirited idiocy of others. I remember wisdom, hard won at school and places even worse and scarier. I remember those now out of time that took the time to force their light into my darkness.

Ideas matter. All humans are heroic. We will happily eat bugs, or each other when we get hungry enough. Milk and cookies seems to me like a better idea.

Ideas matter. Abraham Lincoln was murdered to protect some idea, From 1914 to 1945 at least 70 million people died for a flock of passions and ideas that mostly seem ridiculous in hindsight, or at least more ridiculous than getting ice cream with the kids, practicing patience and taking a nap.

The lights went out in Europe for 31 years and a communist brown out in Eastern Europe lasted fifty more. Can we do better for a while?

So the power went out at Hillas Packaging for several hours. Wealth production stopped, our civilization declined for a bit. Passion for leisure welled up in at least one member of our tribe. Intense happiness at our collapse was mingled with anger that thirty minutes of lucky leisure was wasted while we took an estimate of the situation.

Too much rejoicing at power outages and we will be heroically eating crickets, drinking from ponds and risking our necks in the process of stealing our neighbor's cattle.

My idea is instead of rejoicing at power outages, we create a business that we as individuals are proud of and in our long end days of forced leisure remember as a sunny time.

Ideas matter. We have a derelict building that we can bring back to life. David is putting his stamp on a thing that is likely to last longer than any of us. Haris and Jorge took a Saturday to make their own lasting impression on an object that with care may outlast them. You can add your creativity to a building and a business that may last a while.

Neither will suite you if you do not form it in a way that suits you. Without a purpose larger than yourself you have no lasting purpose. Can you have a purpose smaller than yourself?

If you are working so hard that you feel unappreciated or unfairly paid, work less. We are here to be happy. The business exists for us, not us for it, just keep in mind that crickets may be hard to digest and not as smooth as chocolate. A good dinner,or good business requires extra effort for the unexceptionable such as us.

Remember I am not you and have not the wisdom to fully appreciate everything you do. Something's must be done because you believe it is the right thing even if nobody else does and nobody is looking.

Results matter, a good idea, or good effort to count must bring forth some tasty fruit. For who among us is endless leisure not creeping closer? For the brief now activity maybe a wiser path than sloth.