
We received this contributed article written by the award-winning author of the inspirational bestseller, The Legacy Letters, Carew Papritz and we are happy to publish it:
This letter was written to a close friend of mine the day after the presidential election. In another time, not so long ago, inauguration day would have been part of the normal American walk of life—the peaceful transfer of power and then back to work, family, friends, and life. Now the normal is not normal, and many seek a way forward through the division, anger, and seemingly dark days ahead. Hopefully these words will help offer a way forward for those who believe that the better angels of our nature must somehow continue to fly.
To My Dearest Friend,
What’s important in life . . .
Glaciers don’t care. Nor trees or flowers. Clouds don’t care. Rocks really don’t care. And oceans, creeks, rivers, and lakes? They are the embodiment of not caring. And I like that they don’t care. Because it reminds me of who’s really in charge of the universe. And it ain’t me.
The election is over. The inauguration is over. It is a new political era. Now, the depression sets in. It gets into our stomach and our chest. It even seems to infect our skin and bones. It warps our mind and hurts our heart. It’s not only losing an election but losing on a grander scale. I get that. I feel that. As if there is a conspiracy of darkness plotting to take over the lightness of light. Yet, if you give into darkness, the darkness will return in kind. That’s how darkness truly works. But I’ll be damned if I’ll go gently into this good night.
I can’t tell you that everything is going to be okay because that’s not how the world really works. But I can tell you that you will be okay because you have all the treasures of your kingdom right before you, and within you, to lift you up and give you hope.
The greatest country in the world is your son. He is an entire geography of childhood to explore. You are his guide on this extraordinary adventures called his life. And what’s even more amazing is that he is your guide too. He reminds you that you are in his world filled with endless days and hours of curiosity. You cannot help but lose yourself in his world as he invites you to play within the endless green meadows of his imagination.
Your son is your smile. If all is lost, then look at him, watch him smile at you, and the world, which was topsy-turvy a moment ago, has righted itself and all is good again.
Do I wax poetic and sound like some sort of naïve fool trying to purposefully bury my head in the sand in hopes that all the anguish and ugliness will go away?
Maybe . . .
But there are practical salves to the soul that we now all must do to keep our hopes alive and our hearts intact.
What is only three steps out your front door and is always and forever unforgiving, ever present and exquisitely beautiful, and a constant reminder of how small and insignificant we are in the universe? Nature.
You’ve heard me for years talk about taking time-outs in the great outdoors. I know. It all sounds so touchy-feely. Something that everyone else needs but you. But I beg of you now—step outside that door and really, really look, and feel, and smell, and touch the entire creation of the world directly in front of you. It’s so important to know that for all of man’s greatness and stupidity, it cannot compare with the god-given gift that is yours for the taking—and all you have to do is walk right into the middle of it—and it’s everywhere, and it’s free.
I am continually in awe of how a mere minute of gazing at the clouds drifting by or watching snowflakes tumble to the ground, or listening to the chorus of songbirds singing their springtime hallelujahs can so easily remind me of how lucky and blessed I am to be aware and alive.
The other secret to staying sane is moving. The body wants to move. Whether fleeing out of fear or from folly, it craves direction. When you combine moving, being outdoors, and playing with your son, you have crafted the trifecta of a perfect moment in life, an armor of beauty and life-affirming happiness that no hatred, ugliness, or despair can penetrate.
You can also move away from things. From negative, pessimistic, discouraging, depressing, fatalistic, gloomy anything or anyone. Stop constantly watching the news. Quit your addictive social media scrolling. Hang up the phone, shut down the endless electronic rat-a-tat-tating on your brain, and look up at the world. We are so easily consumed by our technologies, of their diversions or excitations, that we believe that are somehow saving us—from whatever we need saving from. They are thieves to the real world, the one you need to be living in and is right in front of you, and that needs you.
Break bread. Bring back the Sunday meal or the Saturday meal. Gather your friends and family and have a potluck once a month. Or a bonfire. Or a drink. Share conversations that actually involve talking face to face. It may sound funny, but we humans were meant to be together, to share the day’s memories, to regale ourselves with laughter, and to rejoice in the beauty of a meal shared, which is food for both the stomach and the soul.
The funny thing about trying to find happiness in all these ways is that you eventually make it a habit of being happy. I know it sounds strange, but I think happiness is very vastly underrated in our society. It’s actually okay to be happy and to make people smile and to look for joy in every single moment possible. Because the opposite is a constant search for other people’s misery—the us vs. them syndrome—which begets the old phrase of misery loves company. And for that company, there’s a lot of misery to go around.
If you string enough moments of happiness and gratitude together, you will actually be happy. And that is no small thing in this life.
Lastly, we cannot always save the world, but we can save our world. How? By giving.
Give. Give thanks, give time, give happiness. Give a smile and watch it boomerang back to you. Give through momentary an act of kindness and see how it surprises people. Give thanks through a letter or note (where have you heard this before . . .)
Give of yourself to others, however you can. Give back to your community. Or to an organization you support. And not just money. Give your time. Sprinkle a few hours here or there. Help a neighbor or friend that’s down on their luck, or just needs a simple dose of hug or humanity. A little goes a long ways.
When you’re feeling down, give. When you’re happy, give. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving. Giving gives (which is almost so obvious, I’m surprised it’s not a bumper sticker). To give or not to give is not the question. Give yourself to the world and watch in amazement how it gives back to you.
Why does giving work so magically? Because you actually have to do something. You have to move. It’s a real human action and not an emoji or a text. Because it’s real, it’s true. And the trueness of your actions always seems to bring out the happy in people. That’s the gift of giving, which makes everyone, accidentally or otherwise, somehow happier.
I write this letter to two people. First, I write this letter to you because you are a dear friend of many years who I know would appreciate these words, especially at this moment in time. But second, I write this letter to me because I need to remind myself of how much goodness there is in the world. And that if by reminding you of how precious are the joys right in front of our eyes, I might remind myself to take some of the same medicine.
So, let’s find every way possible to fight for our happiness. For the goodness in our lives, in our families, and in our communities. For the glee and smile of our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews. For the ever-giving beauty of nature, which is only a skip and a hop away.
Let us not be consumed by the anger and ugliness that may surround us in the days to come. Though it may not be soon enough, they will always implode, as they always must. Now is the time to be aware and awake to being alive, really beautifully, magnificently alive. Be the light and the lighthouse to yourself and to others, and all that darkness will be pushed back into its mean and pathetic little corner.
All this light and all this beauty, and all we have to do is to remember to use it . . .
With my deepest regards,
Carew
AUTHOR BIO:
Carew Papritz is an educational thought-leader, literacy advocate, and award-winning author of the inspirational book, The Legacy Letters. Through his innovative efforts such as the I Love to Read YouTube series and National Thank You Letter Day, Papritz has made a universal impact by being an advocate for literacy and teaching people of all ages about personal and global legacy issues. Papritz’s writing has been published in a number of media outlets including The Kelly Clarkson Show, Huffpost, Inc., Reader’s Digest, Fox News, Woman’s World Magazine, Yahoo! News, and First Time Parent Magazine. For more information, visit Thelegacyletters.com or follow Carew on social media. He’s @CarewPapritzOfficialPage (on Facebook); @CarewPapritz (on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest); and @Thelegacyletters (on YouTube) The Legacy Letters is available everywhere books are sold.
As of Monday, Donald J. Trump is officially the 47th president of the United States. He starts his second term in the Oval Office with a bang – rolling out dozens of executive orders fulfilling promises made to American voters — and more popular than he has ever been.
Democrats have no idea how to respond. Their party is currently earning its lowest approval ratings ever, for good reason. It is guilty of perpetrating the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes — pretending President Joe Biden was OK to run for another four years. Their efforts to brand Donald Trump a threat to Democracy were a bust and their leadership is in disarray. They deserve every minute they serve in political purgatory.
A former communications director for Kamala Harris says Democrats “got to burn down our image.” He’s right.
The party’s trials will not end soon. As Trump takes office, he and his team will shine a spotlight on Democrats’ dishonest efforts to bar him from public office, from bogus lawsuits aiming to put him in jail to the Russiagate hoax. The country wants accountability for those trying to censor right-wing voices and for hiding evidence of Biden family corruption.
In issuing pardons to some of the miscreants, like Anthony Fauci and Liz Cheney, Biden acknowledges their complicity. By extending pardons also to numerous Biden family members, Joe is all but admitting they aided and abetted the influence-peddling and pay-to-play activities led by Hunter Biden. What a shameful exit, reinforcing Biden’s standing as one of the most unpopular presidents of all time.
Democrats now must rebuild their trust with the American people. They have lost favor (and elections) because they don’t know what they stand for or who they represent. Joe Biden in his farewell address talked about a mysterious “oligarchy” of “extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy,” but most think that’s the crowd who threw a billion dollars into Kamala Harris’s campaign , only to see her lose.
The slide in Democrat popularity has occurred mainly amongst Hispanics, young adults, lower-income Americans, those without a college degree, Catholics, and Black Americans. In short, Democrats are losing ground with the very groups they have relied on to win elections for several decades. Increasingly, the people supporting Democrats are college grads and people with above-average incomes – the limousine liberal set.
Democrats are coming unglued even as the leadership is fracturing. Squabbling between long-time party leaders like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is embarrassing; one of Nancy Pelosi’s daughters recently likened Joe’s wife Jill Biden to Shakespeare’s heartless and ambitious Lady MacBeth. That stings.
The Pelosi-Biden split is not just about personalities. It is also about the enormous Democrat-led conspiracy that allowed Joe Biden to become president in 2020 and that pushed for him to serve a second term, despite his obvious mental deterioration. Voters saw through the carefully-managed stagecraft that sought to hide Joe’s impairment. Even half-way through his term a majority of the country thought he was too old to run.
Incredibly, Joe Biden still thinks he could have beaten Donald Trump, proving that he has been kept in the dark by the people who surround him. This detachment from reality showed up as early as 2021, when Biden and his wife participated in a Christmas Eve call-in show. A caller naughtily told the Bidens, “Merry Christmas and Let’s Go Brandon,” a popular and wide-spread slam against the president at the time. Biden, clueless, repeated the phrase, chuckling and saying, “Let’s Go Brandon, I agree”, showing how out of touch he was.
House Speaker Mike Johnson recently described a meeting in which he pressed Biden on why he had paused new permits for LNG exports, only to have the president deny taking such a measure. Johnson genuinely believed Biden didn’t know what he had signed” and left the White House worried the nation is in “serious trouble.”
Signs of Democrat weakness are everywhere. On the cusp of Trump’s inauguration, their efforts to repulse his cabinet nominees look to be failing; their nasty personal attacks on Pete Hegseth, set to lead the Department of Defense, and Pam Bondi, likely to become our next attorney general, looked petty and mean-spirited rather than consequential. Equally distasteful has been the slew of last-minute lawsuits and executive actions issued from the White House, many of which set roadblocks before the incoming Trump administration.
Even the liberal media is floundering, with many leading organizations, including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, evidently reconsidering their role as Democrat propagandists. Only the New York Times remains resolute in its opposition to the incoming president, but then they have crossword puzzles and recipes to keep them afloat.
honestly Bob; go Fuck Yourself
Sounds like fun. I’ll try it and let you know how it goes.
Dan, I took you up on the invitation to go F myself. Since I was unfamiliar with the act, I was able to get some good instructions from your OnlyFans page. However, once I saw how messy and disgusting it was, ( you really should get those rubber sheets,Dan.. just sayin…) I have decided to decline your invitation. But thanks for the consideration.. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness.
I’m with you on the need to find joy amid the good fight. I’m writing because I’m a longtime fat rights activist and author. I grew up in Orange County and have lived here again for a decade.
I notice the choice to use a photo of the naked Trump statue, which first appeared in San Francisco, during his last term, at a time when I lived in that city. There is a long history of fat activism in San Francisco. It is one of two California cities that have laws against weight-based discrimination. So we were able then to publicly make the point that there are millions of important reasons to criticize Trump that have nothing to do with his weight. Fat-shaming is punching down, not up. As UCI prof Sabrina Strings explains in her excellent book, “Fearing the Fat Body,” anti-fatness arose directly from racism and white supremacy and attempts to justify enslaving Black people. Fat jokes are not radical and not at all okay.
Fat people live in OC. Fat people are likely to be BIPOC, older, queer, and disabled.
When you mock fatness, fat people notice. You remind us that we are not welcome here. You remind us that you don’t see us as people. I don’t imagine, especially at this terrible time, that you really wish to reinforce such attitudes.
Mocking Trump, who says he weighs 215; the Emperor has no clothes
Do you have a “thyroid problem” or are you just unable to stop
Stuffing your pie hole.. just wondering. Dan decided to delete comments so now he must suffer… until he learns to engage in honest debate.
Biden Corruption: He’s your boy, Dan…an influence peddling progressive scumbag.
China
Hunter attempted to set up a deal in 2017 with CEFC, China’s largest private energy company. An email retrieved from his discarded laptop written by an associate suggested “the big guy” would get a 10 per cent stake in the venture. Hunter’s former business associate, Tony Bobulinski, claimed the big guy was Joe Biden.
Hunter told a congressional hearing that the email was a suggestion by colleagues to involve his father without his father’s knowledge, and was not taken any further.
During a 2020 presidential debate with Trump, Biden said: “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China … the only guy who made money from China is this guy [Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”
Trump said: “Once you became vice-president he [Hunter] made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow and various other places.” Biden replied: “That is not true.”
Later, however, it emerged that Hunter had made substantial sums in China, telling a court in his tax case that he made $664,000 from CEFC. Comer’s committee claims to have identified $8 million from Chinese sources received by the Biden family and associates.
Russia
Comer’s committee also says it has evidence of a payment of $3.5 million in February 2014 from Elena Baturina, Russia’s richest woman at the time, to an account owned by Devon Archer, a business partner of Hunter’s. From there, $2.75 million was allegedly sent to a company owned by Archer and Hunter.
Romania
Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian property entrepreneur, sent $3 million in 2015-17 to a company owned by Hunter’s associate Rob Walker. Just over $1 million was transferred from there to various Biden family accounts, including $10,000 to Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden who subsequently had a relationship with Hunter, his brother.
In 2014 and 2015 Joe Biden met with Romanian leaders to address corruption. Hunter was retained as a lawyer to help Popoviciu fight corruption charges, leading Public Citizen, an ethics watchdog, to say it was “hard to avoid the conclusion” he was hired because of his name at a time when his father was associated with a push for high standards.
In August, the special prosecutor in Hunter’s tax case announced he intended to bring evidence during his trial that he and an associate “received compensation from a foreign principal who was attempting to influence US policy and public opinion and cause the United States to investigate the Romanian investigation of [Popoviciu] in Romania”.
This would have brought renewed focus on the cash from Romania and potential ties to Joe Biden, but it was never aired in court because the following month Hunter unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty and avoided a trial.
Kazakhstan
Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh businessman, attended the Cafe Milano dinner with Baturina, Hunter, Joe Biden and Archer. Six days later a Singaporean company of Rakishev’s wired $142,300 to a company owned by Hunter, which was the price he paid for a sports car the next day.
You think the Bidens will escape from culpability for what they have done?
Who is / was a threat to democracy?
The Biden Family cannot plead the 5th. They will be subpoenaed by congress.
If they dont appear, they go to jail, just like Trumps associates that Biden jailed.
If they lie under oath, they go to jail for perjury.
The truth will come out.
Soon.
The Democrat party…. can go F themselves.
Enjoy your ” Better Angels”
Typical progressive bullshit.