"PROCEED WITH CAUTION"

  A warning so accurate for our times. In fact, there are very few areas, if any, that could not use or benefit from a heavy dose of the simple title statement. It is a statement meant also for everyday life, as one does not go run to play in traffic, nor wear ice skates to walk in puddles. How much moreso meaningful and apropos when we tread carelessly and clumsily - even knowingly - into glaringly erroneous, divisive statements and deeds. 

Today's title is granted so generously by Walmart as it is battered by the recent outsized growth of commercial shoplifting, particularly within the area of self-checkouts. Shoppers with goals of taking what is unpaid for, believe they are safe to 'sin' as no human eyes re watching - or so they think.    Well, proceed with caution as Big Brother tech is alive and well, and watching. think twice and once again before you 'forget' to scan that item.

 Even more disturbing is the huge growth of this shoplifting industry, along with related charming activities of mass rushes and thefts- enter, grab, run out, profit. There is a screw loose - no, many screws and nails and mortar missing in our moral composition these days. Lawlessness is ever more tempting and prevalent as people emulate their so called 'betters' who engage hourly in shoplifting from America's citizens. They trample on rights as they gather more, to stuff in pockets and run!!!!    Shoplifting from Peter to pay Paul, the little people of America watch, wonder, and learn - and go to work with a misplaced, misused American can-do attitude. 

Ironically, they steal from places meant to aid them. Walmart, Target, Kohls, JCPenney, etc., with their lower cost items, from home goods to clothing, are life savers for consumer with limited funds. Theft from them is equivalent to stealing from one's own self for costs will be made up - as prices rise. Backfiring right back at us. A perfectly stupid idea. Never mind immoral, unethical, illegal, and a sin in the religious world and that will cost you elsewhere.    

Certainly, our kids watch, grow more cynical, more disrespectful and contemptuous, as they then copy their so called 'betters' and look what we have wrought. Worthy repayment for our errors and our obstinacy at not seeing the truth or hiding from it even if perceived. 

With a glaring and growing neglect of implementation of that caution, we proceeded to rip this country apart, with the rest of the world following not far behind, even overtaking us in some ways. Africa, a continent with huge stocks of precious minerals, with mammoth potential, where great strides had been made in controlling civil war, in a growth of education, with bustling economies - now so greatly deteriorated, war torn, with starving and fleeing citizens, with brain drains sapping the continent of a future. 

The rest of the world watches as they, our proxies in a bloody antiimperialist war fight in our name, with our toys, and shed their blood as their nation is bombed to cement fragments and wood splinters. As the rest of Europe returns, unbelievably, to fascism, to rightwing extremist governments who merrily spend their energies on the dismemberment of any progress made after the dissolvement of the USSR and its stranglehold upon them. 

 Why? Because we threw away cautionary advice and allowed for the growth of vile arrogance, in Putin and others of his ilk. Because misuse of caution crippled proper response, with preventive and proactive procedures neglected, left to gather dust in forgotten closets. We allowed, in fact, for shoplifting within our own nations and populace.  Hope and progress, pocket lifted from our own pockets. Enabled by a lack of caution as we proceeded in life. As we lost the caution provided by lessons of the past. As cautionless, we replayed grievous failures in a moronic anticipation of different results. We walked carelessly through life, caution discarded with ever more enthusiasm, faulty thinking and foolish, inherently dangerous deeds proliferated, and well, here we are. Where do we go from here? No clue. Ony that optimism is in short supply. Further deterioration ahead.

Scientists have now said that prior to a heart attack, the day before, there are warning signs. Ignore at one's own peril. Similarly, there are warning signs of national heart attacks. We have ignored at our own peril.  Political and ethical presigns of heart attacks on and of the body politic, on the moral and ethical composition of societies. Have we waited, ignored and deteriorated beyond all hope of remediation or even prevention? Dunno. Time will tell.

If we do not begin to better our teamwork, to work in tandem rather than pull in opposite directions, we will be lost. Hopefully, humanity has enough   remaining cells of memory to fight this tendency, to an innate selfishness which infects too many, and choose instead the purer path, the more productive path of peace and cooperation. We all do not have to hold the same beliefs. What we must hold is the right to express those beliefs without threats and/or actual use of violence. The good feeling one gets after doing good is so much better than the sour tang of bad.

All of you have done so with Yitzy, shared so much good with him. We are hopeful that three more months of treatment, scans, monthly follow up chemo for five more months and then scans again. In the meanwhile, he is slowly, enthusiastically, returning to a normal life -with interruptions as necessitated by treatment routines. His grin remains. His spirit is up. His schoolmates welcomed him with open arms. 

Please, let us all keep on with the strength of this togetherness, so effective, so all encompassing, so powerful is the shared love, the shared togetherness. 

Together, always together.

Together, united for good.

Together.

Together.

We can heal the nation.

HEAL THE WORLD.

HEAL YITZY!

Yitzchak Elimelech ben Chana Sarah

May he be granted refuah shelaymah bimheyrah beyameinu. 

 AMEN. AMEN