The right question.

The recent tragedy of the cruiseliner, Costa Concordia, off the coast of Italy brings to light a good question that our society is revealing their answer to. The question in life, for me, is not, "What is best for me?", but rather, "What is best for others?".

Instead of staying on the listing cruise ship, the captain apparently disobeyed his training and direct orders from the Coast Guard to return to the ship and tend to the passengers. The captain thought more of himself than others in this situation and as a result several lives were lost and many more changed forever.

I am reading a book about John Adams and enjoy it immensely. Besides the fact that at age thirty, I know only half of what John Adams knew at the same age. I also find something unique to our founding fathers through historical accounts is that they answer the question proposed very differently than political figures ask today. These men, the men who broke away from England, sacrificed their family life, their fortunes and their friends, to establish a new and free society, asked of themselves what was best for the whole rather than what was immediately best for them.

That is a courageous stand to take. A stand that allows for security and denounces lawlessness. If we live as "every man for himself" chaos grows and disorder destroys. We can see many instances in our society today where "every man for himself" has caused much pain and hardship for others.

Jesus talked with God the Father on the night he was captured. At the end of his conversation he told God, "Not my will, but yours be done." Which, to his death, meant he was willing to choose what is best for others instead of what was immediately better for himself. Jesus asks us to follow his lead and choose what is better for others. In doing so, we reap personal blessings in many different ways. Skipping over the hard decision to set our desires aside we miss out on things much great than we can see today.

"These are the times in which a genious would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the respose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigerous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman." From the book, John Adams.