Christmas wish list
To the editor:
Dear Santa Claus,
You are the most exceptional person ever conceived. You are considered by many to be the only one among us with a reputation for annually making millions of people happy and fulfilling many desires and dreams. I want to personally thank you for being an outstanding and special individual to me in the years of my youth. I admired you and eagerly anticipated your year end visits. What a way to end each year, exchanging gifts, love, goodwill, and happiness. You are so special I struggle to find words to adequately describe you.
Normally at this time of the year, during my youth, I would be writing you a short letter requesting a few personal gifts for myself and my immediate family of nine sisters and three brothers. A large family such as ours did not either anticipate or receive large quantities of Christmas gifts, therefore each gift received was truly special.
Looking back at age 74, with just a little thought, this Christmas list is no longer necessary. This is not to say I have everything I desire. Quite the opposite. I do, however, have everything I need. It is very easy to delude ourselves into confusing our wants with our needs. There is an enormous difference.
This year Santa, in lieu of a personal list, I submit, for your consideration, the following wish list for the entire human race:
1. Provide all of our leaders, both political and religious, with the intellect and resolve necessary to sincerely lead us into a world wide effort to permanently eliminate abject poverty, genocide, political extremism, religious extremism, devastating diseases such as AIDs, prejudices, inequities, and please do not forget greed. The last item is the largest contributor to human misery.
2. Replace the values of our society based upon egotism manipulation, competition, material success, aggression, and hostility with values of compassion, empathy, harmony, and fellowship and above all else, honesty.
3. Realign the thought processes of those who base their economies and societies on warfare. Have them stop making both “smart” and “dumb” bombs. Have the same group of scientists develop something I refer to as “intellectual hand grenades.” Instead of dispersing death and amputations, they would release fumes that would replace murderous and crippling shrapnel with a permanent dose of mental stimulation and compassion.Two items we sometimes lack on a daily basis.
4. Santa, let’s have our scientists now working on more efficient killing machines redirect their efforts and develop a perfume that when used, makes all of us just slightly irresistible to each other, then give one large battle of it to everyone in the word.
5. Have everyone grow more flowers and therefore add more beauty to this old earth. In the same vein give the more creative individuals among us the incentive to write both more and better music, literature, poetry, and songs.
Santa, I realize this is a very, very ambitious list, but if you are inclined to take a whack at it, there are millions of us wiling and able to give assistance. Call me first, Santa, if it is possible to accomplish this large and difficult task, You may not be required to race around the world on Christmas Eve, ever again. No one will ever be in need of a small dose of happiness during their entire life. You would be giving us a tremendous and perpetual dose of it.
Good luck, Santa. We all love you. Feliz Navidad!!
Robert E. Workman
Cape Coral