There is this quote I found on the web, it had no reference or author.  I found it to be enlightening and embodies my very own work ethics. Humans started off with this mentality and as society grew only about 1-5% of the human population still maintain this discipline. 5% is being generous.

“The only place success comes before work is in the Dictionary”

Truer words have never been spoken. Some how the majority of the Human race developed this mentality that they deserve everything and need not work for anything. I get up everyday, I drive 60 miles to work and 60 mile back home. I go to work on time and I stay until the jobs (goals) for the day are completed. If I have to stay late, I do. If I have to leave and work later that night from home, I DO. I do not get paid over time, I only demand that others around me work as hard as I do, or at least half as hard as I do (I can’t expect too much).

I pay my taxes, I pay my insurances, I pay my mortgage and everything else you need to pay to live within society. I come up a little short some months and others, I come out on top. I live on the edge of my means, no more, no less. Things could be better, but things could be a hell-of-a-lot worse.

The one thing I do not do is… Blame the person next to me, expect the person next to me to pay for my expenses, my life style, my means. I know if I do not get out of bed every day and go to work, learn something new, advance my skill set, network within my industry or studies, I will not succeed. I will not sulk at the fact that Bill Gates makes more in 1 month then I will see in my entire life. I will not hate the person driving next to me in a Bently or the owner of a house down the street with more bedrooms and garages than me. They worked their asses off for it and deserve to spend their hard earned money any way they seem fit to do so.  So do I.

It is not up to anyone else to decide how I should spend my success. If I choose to donate to charities, then that is my right. It is not up to the government, my community, my fellow man to tell me how to spread my wealth, my success. Yes we are obligated to help our fellow man, HOWEVER, as my father so eloquently  puts it…

“I will not help you hurt yourself”

Giving my “success” to a mother of 4 going on 6 currently receiving tax dollar funded welfare, unmarried and unemployed by choice,  is not “helping” her. Teaching her a trade/skill, donating to a nursery school or school with before and after care programs, giving her a box of condoms even, is helping her. My money will only hurt her, her children and this society more (insert Him if you take offense to me using a woman as a reference). Equip these people to contribute to society and pretty soon you will have an epidemic of growth and success. Like… I know!!!! my God, what would we do if that were to happen???  I don’t know, maybe colonize mars, the moon, discover a new source of energy, etc., etc.

Now you may ask me, Is success just money to you? how do you weigh “Success”?  NO it is not just material, success is a goal or objective that you set to achieve for yourself. Whether it is quitting smoking, earning 100 dollars a day or donating some spare time to teach our youth. No matter what it is, when you set a goal you must work to achieve it and then and only then shall you succeed. Start with “Baby steps” set a daily goal, then set a weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. and work every day to succeed. You will gain confidence, strength, and happiness that could Inadvertently effect and change the world for the better. One success at a time.

I’m not kidding. Take these words to heart, for they are the hard truths of human-ish societies and will be the downfall of our species.

We are just a spec on a spec and probably even smaller than that. To try to put this in perspective you will have to be good with zeros.

First, how fast is light? It is about 186,282 miles per second. The closest star to us is our Sun at 93 million miles away, roughly 8 light minutes. The next closest star, our best chance for life after earth is Alpha Centauri (actually 3 stars) just 4.27 light years away. or in other words 5.88 trillion miles multiplied by 4.27. That is a tiny, tiny bit over 25,000,000,000,000 miles away. How many years away is that at say 17,000 mph (how fast the space shuttle orbits the earth). It would take 1,407,588,235.3 years to reach the next “sun”. That is 1.407 Billion-ish.

So we have the distance and we can see the star from earth but can the star see the earth. Alpha Centauri A is the biggest and is about 10% more massive than our Sun, with a radius about 23% larger. How big is our sun? It would take 109 Earths to stretch across the Sun, and it would take over one million Earths to fill it. The circumference of the earth at the equator is about 24,901.55 miles. The Sun’s circumference is 2,713,406 miles and Alpha Centauri is 3,337,489.4 miles in circumference. We are talking millions of miles around versus 10’s of thousands of mile around. Still not convinced we are nothing.

With the Hubble telescope we have taken Deep Field space pictures and stared at what we believe as of now, the edge of the known universe. How far did we see…. after 10 days of pictures with exposures for 15-40 minutes per shot taken in ultraviolet, blue, red, and infrared light as well, showed us 1,500 galaxies in a space the size of a dime 75 ft away at various stages of evolution. This image shows us galaxies 10 billion years into the past, perhaps less than one billion years after the universe’s birth in the Big Bang.

Once again, not even a spec of a spec… specs are galaxies. So what makes humans so special compared to everything else?

Think about it.