Atlas Shrugged - Finding Joy and the Value of Shrugging

I've started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand finally after a lifetime of synchronicity probing me to read it. Kids on planes reading it and telling me that their father required it before graduating college. My house framer who came from Mexico under sketchy means and struggles with English shows me the book in his old pick-up truck and tells me he's finished reading it and how it's changed his life.

So now I'm finally reading it. And my wife is also. And I wake up at 4:00 in the morning with parts of it on my mind and go into the living room and pick up where I left off.

One of the pointers from it impacting me this morning is the need and freedom for a man to be able to do what he wants to do. This freedom is his earned reward for his hard work and is just return within a moral universe and a right to be enjoyed free from guilt.

I've struggled most my life with this one. Trying to find joy free of guilt.

I've found the point in my history where this anomaly first entered my moral conscious and bent my path crooked for the next 40 years. It came from my sweet loving and very religious Grandma when I was probably about ten years old. 

I'll tell the story in a separate blog entry hopefully. It has to do with how you interpret the phrase in Psalms 23 that says, "I shall not want."

Point being for now. Read Atlas Shrugged. The world needs you to read it. You need to read it.

Mitch Sanders