One of the advantages of dancing with death is that it teaches the dancer something that those that haven’t done the dance can’t fully comprehend. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t have gotten the message had I not had a subdural hematoma and metastasized prostate cancer. While I have recovered from both the traumatic brain injury and cancer, I know, at my gut level, that my clock is ticking. Everyone knows they won’t live forever. However, dancing with death on the dancefloor of life will change your life in a most positive way. Trust me. I’m a different cat than I was prior to either dance.

I have always been driven, but now it is greatly intensified. I’m healthy and have no medical issues facing me. Nonetheless, I’m not going to waste the time that I do have. Go to Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.

I am living a purposeful life. I listened to Pausch who had pancreatic cancer and would die ten months later. Watch that video. He had an extremely purposeful life due to his dance with death.

That is the backstory.

On January 6th Trump along with his attorney, Giuliani, spoke to the crowd of Trump supporters in Washington. This is a part of Trump’s call to arms.

“…we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue….”

Trump boldly said that “we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.” Well, that was another of his litany of lies. They followed their Chicken-in-Arms’ marching orders while our macho coward went back to the White House to watch TV coverage of his coup d'état.

Now, those rioters also have purposeful lives. They wanted to overturn the presidential election of Joe Biden. Trump and his minions claim that the election was rigged and stolen from him. Trump’s lawyers went to nearly five dozen State courts and two attempts at the Supreme Court claiming fraud. None of the court’s bought any of Trump’s claims. Biden still won seven million more votes than Trump. Biden won by seven million votes. Trump’s lawyer couldn’t get any judge to hear their case, and, if the heard the case, then dismissed it. No evidence was presented. This is a litany of Trump’s lawsuits.

Trump’s sees himself as living purposeful life. His life is only about himself. He wants to be the center of attention and the controller of everything. If anyone doesn’t kowtow to him, they are in trouble. Trump’s lapdogs told him what he wanted to hear. Nevertheless, Pence knew that he had only a perfunctory role before the Congress as they listened to the Electoral College vote.

Pence is now paying for is four years of saying, “Yes, sir, your majesty.” Every time Trump wanted Pence to support him, his lapdog obliged. Since Pence couldn’t overturn the election, Pence was in trouble. During the riots on January 6th, some of the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Trump’s threat about being an obedient lapdog

Therefore, the issue of finding a purposeful reason for being boils down to Søren Kierkegaard’s either/or issue. Either we find a purposeful life, or we play the charade of people like Trump and his supporters. It is a simple choice, either/or. Choose wisely.

This rioter has made his choice.

This is his purposeful life.

There is a hint. A purposeful life has to do with broadening what we call our family. Your family can’t be just you. That is Trump’s family. Your family should go beyond your immediate family. Over seven years ago, I discovered my family in Myanmar. This is our family just before ballooning over Bagan.

In my life, I have listened to and attempted to emulate a long list of my mentors. However, Bobby Kennedy is the single most important of all my mentors. He guided me in living a purposeful life. Bobby said, “The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.” He made sure that we understood our purpose by adding. “We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in an endless amassing of worldly goods… The gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”