Night has fallen. A new day is coming. End-of-year plans are forming. What was planned is here. Trips to make food to eat, fun to experience. The Voice is in the background, hard to discern, yet there. Scientists say the mind may continue in some quantum form after death. So the self is not lost. There are many things to do, some true, some important.

Pastor Meg reminded us that what we enjoy, someone else worked on. We did not do it alone. There really are no self-made women or men. They heard the Voice. Life is showing up. Generations showed up for us.

We have a part in the production. We may be in the background, unseen and unheard. A kind professor admonished me to be proud of my custodial duties at the University; all work was noble. Without the work of the unseen and unheard, the University would not function.

I smile when folks tell me how their strength, effort, and fortitude created their nice life. The work done by so many before the ‘Bootstrap Lifting People’ paved the way for their success.

‘Come and join me in the woods; we will listen for the answer,’ the Voice said. ‘Things seem strange; we have brought ourselves to this time,’ the Voice continued. ‘We are like the man who saw his reflection in the mirror and turned away, forgetting what manner of man he was,’ the Voice mused. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves,’ the Voice said softly.

‘Trust me, be like me; mimic me,’ the President said. ‘I am a winner; many are losers,’ the President continued. ‘I became a billionaire on my own, no help, just my marvelous big brain,’ the President boasted. ‘I need no counsel, advice, or mentoring; I am complete in myself,’ the President said.

The Old Man listened as the rich man described how his millions came from his hard work pulling himself up by his bootstraps, while the thousands working for him received little money or reward.