I live in a home in San Francisco, in the United States in the year 2013.
You and I live in paradise. Sometimes we forget what a paradise we live in today.
For 10 years from 1972 to 1982 I avoided all media including TV, movies, newspapers, magazines and radio. I knew what the news was most of the time but I didn't know who died during that ten year period. News is in the air.
I was extremely happy during that 10 years.
As an ordinary person, without an inheritance, I have been an airplane pilot, a partner in a large sailboat, a skier, a scuba diver, a runner and I am currently a regular swimmer and martial art practioner.
Knowing that it is my current immersion in the media around me that keeps wild happiness at arms length. Some of the time.
Not only do we live in a paradise with luxury living, food, transportation, recreation and communication, but all of these have been getting better throughout our lives.
Communication has been getting better in every way in every medium. We don't change automobile tires anymore, cars are much more reliable, streets are cleaner, we have gone through a period of astronomic crime and that is over. We have extraordinary healthcare technology, our air and water are so much cleaner in the last half century.
We owe all of this to the fact that our country was created by frontiers people who supported each other out of generosity and only built the most minimal government when it was needed.
Most of all the frontiers people who settled this country appreciated commerce more than any other peoples on the planet.
Thank you all, and thanks to our great business people who have given us this paradise.