We spent Christmas in India this year.

I was surprised to see all of the decorations in the hotels and other buildings.

There are of course, less and less of us in our family and yours as the years go by. We all have busy lives and not enough time to visit our loved ones.

This year we ended up in India for Christmas and were rewarded with a wonderful trip and met many new friends.

I am always reminded on these trips just how similar we all are. We have the same needs and wants as most people living on this very small ball.

Yes, there is evil out there and never forget that, but it cannot consume our lives. We were put here to enjoy life as well as to improve it. Your idea of evil may be different than mine, but I think we can all agree on what true evil is.

The destruction of other people’s right to speak freely without being injured being one of them. Likewise the destruction of other people’s religious or non religious monuments is evil. Those monuments belong to all of us and no one group or cult has the right to destroy them.

Statues reminding us of our mistakes in our past are more valuable standing and being talked about than being turned into gravel or scrap metal. The Communists have done this kind of thing for centuries. Do we want to go down that road. I think not.

Everyone should have the right to express their opinion no matter how wrong or silly they are. Their remarks will expose them for what and who they are. That is a good thing. I want to see and hear the crackpots and know what they believe and where they are.

My opinions are worth just about what you pay for them as are yours. Don’t take yourself so seriously that you become a boor. Facts are a different matter. Boor, there’s a good old word. Look it up if you don’t know what it means. There are plenty of boors around these days.

I try to learn something from everyone I meet. They may not agree with me, but I may actually be wrong about something. Have ever thought that you might be wrong about any number of things? Self reflection is important to personal growth. I think we all need a little more of that these days.

We are off to the Stans on Friday, April 19th. Uzbekistan,Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are our destinations. We will be traveling on and around the silk road. There is plenty of history in that part of the world to study and learn from.

If something happens and I don’t come back, that’s alright. I have had a wonderful life. It was full people that I loved and loved me. It was also full of hard, rewarding work, personal accomplishments and rewards galore. Take some risks in your life. You will be rewarded many times over. Think of all your friends in a foreign land that you haven’t met yet.