Social Psychology

I was recently talking to a friend (who is proud of his Finnish heritage) about the folly of fighting the Russians in winter. He said “We did it, and we won.” I checked the facts on this, and sure enough, the Russians had maybe 4-5 times the casualties as the Finns. Finland however gave up some land with high economic value and had to pay Russia for reparations. Who really won, if anyone? Sometimes the cost of winning doesn’t actually look much like a win at all. So which battles will you win today?

As a follow-up to Father Frank’s wise words, we could also state that we are human beings, not human havings. Your value as a human is not based on what you have, what you do for a living, or how much you experience.

We like to feel in charge of our own destiny. We like to think we shape our own future. We see inspirational messages about shaking off the past, but how can we do that when our past is the only resource we have to make decisions and create new ideas? We’ll be looking at those questions this week.