Just for profit

Clarence Page begins his opinion with, “Private businesses are trying to block Obamacare on religious grounds? What do companies worship besides, perhaps, the almighty dollar?”

Stop right there and think with me.  I have started 5 businesses and only one earned a living wage.  Would anybody start a business, committing their heart and soul, life, fortune and sacred honor, only with purpose of making money?  Would you endure those lonely night worries and earnest prayers about staying out of bankruptcy just for the wise-ass notion of making a buck?  Would you go through those hundred hour weeks, the time neglecting your family, to do something you are not passionate about?  I wouldn’t.

And frankly, I don’t know another person who has started a business who didn’t have some kind of dream about serving people.  You spend hours pondering whether to take the plunge, thinking about how you might fill some niche your community needs or doing something the public doesn’t even know it needs yet.  In the end, you realize that the profiting is just a measurement for keeping score –will you be allowed to fulfill your dream or go down in flames?  Indeed, Judeo-Christian ethic holds that God seeks people out with His own dreams and calls them to an enterprise and purpose for their lives.

If you survey other businessmen and women, they tell you the same thing I have said.  If you survey folks who never started a company, they will tell you they once had a dream to do something—or wished they had had a better one.  Dreams are what make business click.  I provide a product or service that you are willing to pay me for.  You are delighted with the product/service.  I am delighted that you caught a piece of my dream, and by the way, I can afford to live off the money and continue.

Yet, to my amazement, I find a lot of crass and cynical people seem to agree with Clarence.  To me this shows the utter bankruptcy of the left’s ideals on life.  They don’t dream much nor have much appreciation for the dreams of others.  They just want to control them. To simply slog through life on the public dole is just fine.  Often they psychologically project their meager dream, to have more money and power, on all the rest of us who strive diligently and passionately to make dreams come true. Thus they claim we worship the almighty dollar instead of the Almighty who inspires our dreams.

Next time you hear someone say that business is only about profit, ask them if they have ever started a business.