Wherever we are in life, we did not get there without a plan or a reason. Often, we may ascribe our difficulties and struggles in life purely to malign forces outside of our control, whether they be human conspiracies or demonic forces in the spirit realm. My own experiences in witnessing the difficulty people have in working on concert have led me to be extremely skeptical of the many conspiracy theories that float around in evil times like this, where people are extremely willing to believe the worst of others (particularly those in authority) while failing to recognize the importance of automatic patterns of behavior as well as our own role and responsibility in providing constraints on the behavior of others that lead to less than optimal outcomes.

Wherever there are failed and broken human institutions (namely, everywhere), or whenever there are successful institutions, there are reasons for that success that have nothing to do with dark conspiracies and secret meetings for the world’s would-be puppeteers. On the contrary, if we spoke to those who we fancied as being in charge of the world, the titans of industry and culture and political leaders, we would find that all of them, in their unguarded moments, would confess that the goings on of their companies and their nations and their societies was out of their control. Some of them might wish to attain control over their institutions of realms, but the wiser among them would moderate their aims to an influence far less than control in the hopes that their people could be wise enough to be captains of their own vessels.

Even if we fail to prepare for the future, that is still a plan to depend on outside circumstances remaining friendly. Obviously that is not an acceptable plan in times like these where our survival seems at stake because of our failure to be good stewards over our resources. I find it somewhat sad, as someone whose native skills are not related to logistics at all, that those who are best at handling resources have generally corrupted those skills into siphoning off resources for their own selfish benefit rather than being good stewards of resources for the benefit of everyone else, whether that is within institutions or societies. And most people do not plan with an eye toward gaining future resources, and so this world seems divided between those who are profligate and those who are corrupt. No wonder our world is so wretched.

So, we should all be wise and humble enough to recognize that we are all here for some reason. Whatever accidents may happen to us along the course of life, however our own plans may be overridden by the plans of others, the course of our life and how we handle life’s adversities and trials, as well as its opportunities, is our responsibility. Welcome to wherever you are. Wherever it is, you have made your journey according to your own choices, and if you do not like where you are, then let us hope there is time for us to end up somewhere else.