Who's Your Daddy?

I think that is a fair question to ask. But I think we should go back a few generations and think about what our ancestors went through.

First you have to get into the mind-set. Pretend that your grandparents were not the stiff-necked sepia colored wooden caricatures that they appear to be in those old photographs. In fact, put yourself in their place right now. I'll help you with an example.

You've just paid a guide $75 to take you from New Orleans to California. It is the early 1800's and you've just surrendered most of your life savings to make this trip. You hope you can get a homestead and make a new life for yourself and your family. The journey is dangerous in every sense of the word. You face the elements, attacks from hostiles (the people whose land you trespass on who got here first thousands of years ago), and mechanical failure (broken wagon wheels). There is no health insurance, no cell phones, no rest stops, no iPods, no radio, no TV, no nothing except your own determination and vision for a better future. Your wife can handle a rifle as well as you do (she can bring down an elk or a rabbit since your life depends on it). She works as hard as you do in her tasks. The kids help too since they have to. Everyone's on the same team. You sing songs on the trail, read the Bible at night by the camp fire, and keep your minds on the future. Some days there is no game, or no water. You face starvation or dying of thirst. A member of your family gets sick and there is no doctor for a thousand miles. Still you continue on and never stop.

Where has this determination and courage gone? When I think about what the family I described went through, does it really mean anything that I had to wait at a red light for one more minute? Does it really do any good to get angry about that? What if I HAD to shoot some game since my family is starving and I just missed the shot? And now I have to creep up on my dinner for another two miles since they ran from the gunshot? And if I get the game, I have to dress it and carry it back about five miles over difficult terrain so my family can eat. So does it really matter now that there are five people ahead of me in line at Starbucks?