Introduction

So, I'm starting a blog and all blogs should start with an introduction of sorts.

There are certain quotes that are profoundly influential in my beliefs:

No man is an island. - John Donne

Our choices in life can have profound consequences, good or bad, to those around us. When we make poor choices, well, there are people who care about each and every one of us and they are hurt by our poor decisions. One only needs to lose a loved one prematurely to truly understand how truly connected we are.

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.

I do not know the source of this quote, but what an incredible truth. We all have challenges and opportunities. We can move forward and make the best of challenges, or we can make them worse by our attitude and response to them. Our response to life makes a bigger difference to our future than what actually comes are way. We can embrace an opportunity, or we can let it slip away. We can not necessarily control what comes our way, but we can control how we respond to it.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has - Margaret Mead

I believe that we can effect change in the world for the greater good. Change doesn't happen overnight, but if you believe in something, and work at it consistently, you can effect change. I've worked through a 10-year process of effecting policy change, so I know it can be done, and indeed, I know that most good changes that happen in policy are fought for and worked on by only a very few people.

What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it - Georg Wilhelm Hegel, 1770 - 1831

To me, this one represents the cyclic nature of how each generation seems to need to make the same mistakes, or what one generation fought to make better, the next lets go, only to leave it for the generation after to fight again to fix it.

So, there's a philosophical introduction.

Other things, I try to eat right, and exercise.