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Today, as I record this show, it is the Friday before Christmas 2018. Specifically, it is Friday, December 1, 2018. It's 2.20 p.m. as I begin recording this show, in case you need a time stamp. As we close out this week, I didn't quite know what I wanted to say to you.

I knew I wanted to record a show, and I had a bunch of topics. I've got all kinds of topics going, series going. I have no shortage of ideas. I have outlines prepared. I have shows already recorded that I could release to you, and yet it didn't feel right, most of those things.

I thought I was going to do a show today on the deficit and do a, of course, very cheery end of the year show on the trillion dollar deficit in the United States of America this year. That would be cheery right before the end of the year, but I thought, "This is good.

This is useful." It just didn't feel right. I just want to turn on the microphone, just share a few simple thoughts with you to hopefully encourage you. Perhaps you're on an airplane, going to see family. Perhaps you're all alone, sitting in your apartment. Perhaps you're working at your desk over the weekend, feeling sorry for yourself.

Perhaps you're driving along with your children, sleeping in the backseat. I just thought I wanted to share one simple thought with you. It's this. The biggest problems that you and I think about sometimes and worry about have never been more insoluble. They've never been more intractable. They've never been bigger.

And yet, the real problems that you and I face have never been as soluble, as fixable. There's never been so much hope, so many opportunities, so many resources available to solve the things that are in front of us. But in order to experience success in solving those things, we have to turn our attention away from the macro problems that we can't solve and we can't affect to the things that we can.

Now, I'm not expressing anything new. This concept is well-rooted by and well-talked about, well-preached about by many people. Focus on your circle of influence, not on your circle of concern. Absolutely. I'm not saying anything new. Just struck me in a new way today. I've long struggled with an addiction to the news.

Perhaps like you, it's something that I have a hard time figuring out what the right way to handle it is. Some people say, well, don't ever pay any attention to it. Some people say, well, it's really important. And it seems to be a mixture of it. But oftentimes I've been sucked in by goings on and things like that.

But thankfully, over past months, I've been free of those grips. I've not paid any attention. I don't, I've stopped reading news on the internet. I don't use social media. I don't have a TV. So very little has made it under my rock and it's been great. I felt good.

I've been productive. It's been wonderful to be freed of that. Now I had to be a little hardcore to be freed of all that stuff, but it's been great. And so this afternoon when I wasn't quite sure what to do a show on, I just stopped for a moment and the place where I'm working right now has a TV.

So I went and turned on the cable news and it was just insane to look at the news of the day again, Friday before Christmas and talking about war in Syria and secretary of defense, James Mattis resigning and government shutdown and people arguing and flipped around the cable news channels.

And it was just insane, insane. And of course I had prepared this show outline for today to talk about trillion dollar deficits and deficits. And I thought, why don't we actually talk about this instead of, you know, a silly shutdown or a border wall or whatever the news du jour is.

Like, why don't we talk about something that matters, this trillion dollar deficit. This is unprecedented, unprecedented for the US government to run a trillion dollar deficit in without there being a war or an economic recession or a crisis of any kind, unprecedented. And yet we're going to argue about other things.

Now I understand that that's more important to me because of finances. I'm not saying other things aren't important, but there's the important stuff is, it's just hardly ever talked about. And I, anyway, I shut it off and I just, it made me depressed. And I thought, how do you, how do you get through this?

So here's my observation. We live in an age of paradox. The paradox is this, in some ways, things have never been worse. In some ways, things have never been better. Example, I'm very concerned about much erosion of liberty and freedom, very concerning to me. So in some ways, things have never been worse.

But on the other hand, in the history of mankind, it has never been easier for you and I to live freely. And it is right now. What a paradox where there's simultaneously good and bad extremes. In some ways, things have never been tougher. Wealth inequality has never been bigger.

And yet in some ways, things have never been better. There's never been less poverty than there is right now. What a funny paradox. In some ways, you have never been more powerless than you are today. It's never mattered less whether you opened your mouth and said something. There's never mattered less if you cast a vote at a ballot box.

And yet in other ways, an individual human has never had more individual power than you have today. What a paradox. And yet what keeps us from making progress in those things that we can control is worry and concern over things we can't control. The big problems have never been bigger than they are now, never been more insoluble than they are now.

And yet you and I have tremendous power to fix the problems in our life. I want to be a source of solutions. I want to be a source of encouragement, of insight, of education, just like I tell you every single day when I start the show. But I want to focus on things that you can do.

It doesn't mean I want to stay away from big picture things. You need to be aware of the problems, but I want to always focus on things that are within reach because there's so much that's within reach that will make a big difference if you do it and I do it.

And things are simple many times. Now once again, not all the time. There's a story that has always struck me and for context, there are a number of trends that I watch carefully that I'm very concerned about. And one of the trends that really concerns me is the trend towards suicide in the United States of America.

It's deeply concerning towards me. It's an epidemic and it's a tough one because of course, as with any difficult thing, there are many, many influences for it. I was just thinking about suicide and preparing. I want to do this show for you, kind of the state of America, the things I've learned from traveling around the country for the last five or six months.

And suicide is, of course, there are many factors involved, right? It's complex and yet in some ways it's simple. There's a story that's always haunted me. I guess two stories, but there was a famous story about a suicide note, about somebody who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. And a man wrote, when they went and found the suicide note at home, he wrote this.

He says, "I'm walking to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump." That was years ago that that happened. But imagine somebody walking to the Golden Gate Bridge, they wrote a note, said, "I'm walking to the Golden Gate Bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump." Now that man today is dead.

You figure out why. There's another story. There's a man named Kevin Hines who is one of the only, I think, if this is correct, anyway, one of only a couple of people who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and lived to tell about it. And when he tells this story, he jumped off the bridge and he was actually held up by a sea lion in the water until he was eventually rescued because he was severely injured.

But when he tells this story about wanting to commit suicide, he went to the bridge and he stood there on the bridge staring at the railing for about 40 minutes or so, trying to decide whether he was going to jump. And people would walk by him and ignore him.

And when he tells the story, he says, "You know, if someone had smiled and stopped and said, 'Are you okay?' All he wanted to do was to beg them for help and tell them what was going on and ask for help and he wouldn't have jumped." But he didn't feel like he had the courage to just ask for help himself.

And you know, somebody did come by and ask him for help, but they asked him to take a picture for them. And they just walked away and he thought, "You know, nobody cares about me." And then he jumped off the bridge. While he was on his way down, he said, "Wait a second, this is crazy.

I want to live." But of course, he was hurtling through the air. And he was significantly injured. Today he's a public speaker and he speaks about suicide. But those stories, do they not haunt you? You think, could a life be saved by something as simple as a smile? In some cases, yes.

And of course, in many cases, no. It's far more complex. The evil goes far deeper. The suicidal tendency has a far greater grip on somebody's life. So solutions are not super simple, but many of them are simple. I guess in summary, what I want to say is, in the next year, I want to continue to give you the most useful, actionable advice that I can that will help you.

With the real challenge of building financial freedom in your life. And if you'll put that advice into practice, and if I'll put my own advice into practice, then I think you can build up a significantly easier path through the problems that we're going to face in the next year, the next decade, the next 40, 50 years.

Those problems are going to be immense. And there are no easy solutions to the big problems, at least that I can find. They probably would have been put in place already. People are not stupid. But there are solutions for you. There are things that you can do. So as you go into the Christmas holidays, or you enjoy the time for the new year, don't miss the opportunities that are in front of you to smile at somebody, to give somebody a hug, to love somebody, to encourage somebody.

Don't miss the opportunities that are in front of you to pay off your debts, or pay off the debt of another person. Clean up your own mess, fix your income, cut your expenses. Don't miss the opportunities that are in front of you to invest wisely, avoid catastrophe, buy insurance.

Those things are doable. They're simple, but they're doable. So don't ignore those things. Don't miss the fact that you can reach out to your neighbor, you can reach out to your brother, to your sister. You can build community where you live so that as the community across the United States continues to fracture, segment, balkanize, continues to be torn asunder, your own community can be brought together.

Don't miss the simple things. Take action on those, and then as the big problems develop, I think you can be well protected from those things. As I considered the emotions of this afternoon, just the things I was thinking about, I often think in terms of songs. The song that came to me was the song called "Just One Voice." The lyrics say, "Just one voice, singing in the darkness.

All it takes is one voice, singing so they hear what's on your mind. When you look around, you'll find there's more than one voice. Singing in the darkness, joining with your one voice. Each and every note another octave, hands are joined and fear is unlocked. If only one voice would start it on its own, we need just one voice facing the unknown.

And that one voice would never be alone." I was thinking about that song and I was reflecting on Christmas and it's a very important holiday for billions of people all around the world. For many reasons, it's especially an important holiday for Christians. And I just was thinking about that song and I was thinking about it in light of the Christian holiday.

If you ever think about the story of Christianity, it's one of the most improbable stories of all time. It's vanishingly improbable what the world looks like today. If you were to go back about 4,000 years and you were to look at a group of people who come from one relatively small family, a man named Abraham, who had a son named Isaac, who had a son named Jacob, who married two women and had 12 sons, one of whom was sold as a slave because his brothers didn't like him.

Then that son was taken to Egypt. He became a servant and then he was accused of sexual assault, falsely accused of sexual assault. He was tossed into prison. He was in prison, what was it, 12 years, something like that, 12 years. And then the pharaoh of Egypt has a dream in the night that really bothers him, two dreams about some fat cows and some skinny cows and a dream about, what was it, the wheat and corn.

I have to go back and look at those dreams. But he has a dream in the night and nobody can interpret his dreams for him. So then a dude who had his dreams previously interpreted for him says, "Hey, guess what? I knew this guy in prison who interpreted one of my dreams when the cupbearer and I were there and both of the interpretations, the interpretation for the cupbearer and the interpretation for the steward, both of those interpretations are right.

We're dealing with weird stuff, dreams, interpretations." So then Pharaoh goes down, sends for this dude in the prison, brings him out, tells him the dream and the dude interprets the dream. Pharaoh takes this guy and makes him second in command over all of Egypt, thus saving the Egyptian people from a time of seven years of starvation.

And then this dude, his family shows up and he goes and gets his family and brings them all to Egypt, thus saving his family. Improbable enough yet? Now at this point in time, the people start to grow. And I don't know about you, but one of the things that we often have a hard time understanding is what that ancient Egyptian culture was like.

When I went to Egypt years ago, it totally rocked my world. We have this modern concept that there were primitive civilizations in the past. And this is based upon the evolutionary mind frame that basically controls almost all historical interpretation in today's world, that the people of old days were primitive and today were very modern and advanced.

Well certainly, that's true in some cases, but it's not true in all cases. And we have this concept that past civilizations were just primitive, living in the cave after all. And we don't have any context of how incredibly sophisticated many past civilizations were. If you want to be disabused of that idea of primitivism, go to Egypt, stand in the temples, study the society, it's incredible.

Anyway, so here's this guy, Joseph, and then you have a time where these people, all his siblings are protected and raised up for a while, and then they become slaves for what was it, 400 years, I think. So for 400 years, the descendants of Jacob and Abraham and Isaac, they're slaves, they're destroyed, they're beat on, they're slaves.

And for 400 years, God says nothing, God does nothing, God is completely silent. Until all of a sudden, this guy named Moses comes along, who as a baby was going to be killed until he was found by the princess. And so he comes along and he leads the people, this weak people, out of slavery without fighting.

Fighting a battle themselves. And they go from poverty to wealth because the Egyptians are so eager to get rid of them that when they're asked them for their gold, the Egyptians give it to them. That's very interesting. If you study the debate, the historical debate around the Exodus and the archaeological evidence for the Exodus and the lack of evidence for the Exodus, really interesting debate.

I'll skip that for now. But one of the things that is one of the clues that has to be looked into is that particular fact that you have a bunch of people that go from slaves to having all kinds of wealth because their slave masters were so eager to get rid of them.

Then you have all of this history from about 1500 BC, you have the growth of the empire, you have all the prophets, you have the growth of the Jewish empire, King David about 1000 BC. Then you start to have all of these prophets, then you have these people then become slaves again, go into exile.

And then fast forward through all the prophets, through all the exile, then you have another time when nothing, nothing, God doesn't do anything for 400 years. Doesn't speak, doesn't move, there are no recorded miracles. Just a group of people who are worshiping a God who is silent. And then in one little place, a tiny little country called Israel, there's a boy born to a teenage girl and a very ordinary middle class or lower class, I don't know, peasant, guy named Joseph and Mary.

And you have all of these incredible ideas of angelic visitations coming to Joseph and Mary and all of a sudden this guy is born, his name is Jesus. And for 30 years the man does nothing out of the ordinary. Works in his father's carpentry shop, lives an ordinary life for 30 years.

And then for about three and a half years, three to four years, something like that, goes on a ministry in one small little area and pursues a ministry of exorcism and healings and preaching. Spent the vast majority of his time with 12 men. In today's world we would call them boys, teenagers, with 12 teenage guys, perhaps one, perhaps Peter was almost 20 or somewhere around 20 or so.

But he spends three years with 12 teenagers and then dies. Is put to death as a criminal on a garbage heap between a thief and a murderer. Is put to death under false pretenses because of spouting religious heresy against the government control of that time. His entire people are in shambles.

Not even his own family believes in him, his blood brothers, his mom. And then three days later something happens. And those 12 men who were utterly devastated by the death of the person they thought was going to save them from all of the oppression and the slavery that they were under, everything changed.

You know the story from there. So then fast forward to today, you look back over the last two millennia of time and the world has been on fire since then over the claims and the life and the existence of that one man, Jesus. You cannot trace the arc of history without reckoning with him.

And yet can you think of a more improbable event? Can you think of a more unlikely circumstance? Now there've been a lot of unlikely things that have happened in human history, but for the entire world to be set on fire over the life, the birth, the death, the resurrection of one man from two millennia ago.

And today the debates rage, the scholarship rages, the wars rage, the violence rages, the love goes and rages, peace, war, everything around the world. The most influential one, that one man. And then today, of course, Christmas, people remember his birth, one of the most improbable events recorded in history due to the circumstances of that birth, all coalescing around something that I'm convinced nobody really knew about during his life.

Today, you know, the circumstances of the birth of Christ are well known and well documented, well discussed all around the world. I'm personally persuaded that very few of the disciples knew anything about the circumstances of the birth of Jesus. Really the only place that all of the circumstances that today are so well known is recorded in the book of Luke.

And the book of Luke, of course, was written by someone who never personally knew Jesus, was not one of the 12 disciples, was not even a Jew, but was a Syrian. How's that word? How's that for today with the US troops pulling out of Syria? Was a Syrian physician, a Syrian medical doctor who later came and researched all of the details surrounding the birth of Jesus, spoke to his mother, spoke to his family members, and then recorded all those things and created, as he says, even in the beginning of the book of Luke, an orderly history of the account of the life of Christ, which is where today we get all that information from.

I don't think any, it's my own opinion. I don't think anybody knew about the birth of Jesus during his lifetime in the sense of they didn't know about the details that today are so commonly referred to as the Christmas story. Now, of course, we do have some of the information recorded in the book of Matthew, so perhaps I'm wrong about that.

But regardless, the point is, fast forward 2,000 years and in a few days, the majority of the world's population will observe a day, a holiday, recording the birth of one man a couple thousand years ago, and that's not even the day that was the actual birth, which is its own unique history.

The most likely day of the actual birth day of Jesus, of course, being late September, early October. So to bring that to that, my point in all that, forgive me if I went on too long, the point of all that is to say one man. Now, of course, I would say not to diminish the deity of Christ, which I would happily and easily talk about, one God, but one man.

And if you look back in the story, you could see again and again, one man, one man, one man, one woman, one man, one person. And the actions of one person having an effect through human history. Now, most of the time, those individual people are never recorded. They never show up in a history book, and yet one person can make an impact, can make an effect.

So I went long there. It's just such a fascinating story to me. And I think about it a lot at Christmas, just thinking about the impact of one man. And at one tiny point in history, one tiny nation out of a tiny, endlessly persecuted group of people, and yet look at the world today.

Now, to be clear, I'm not Jesus and you're not either. So I don't want anything to do with that kind of idea. Just simply that one voice matters, yours. Here's my commitment to you. This next year, I will work very diligently to give you everything I can to help you make an impact where you are.

And I'll do my best to make an impact where I am. I'm not going to worry about the big problems, except to be aware of them and then try to help you know what you could do for yourself. But if you do that and I do that, and your brother, your sister, your neighbor, your dad, your mom, your children do that, in time, things can change.

Things in the short term never change as much as we want them to, but in the long term, things can change far more than we would like. So I'll close with, I'll play you that song. I'll close simply with that song. I hope you'll enjoy it. Merry Christmas to you.

I'll be back with you on Monday, January 7th for an exciting new year of Radical Personal Finance. Just one voice singing in the darkness. All it takes is one voice singing so they hear what's on your mind. And when you look around, you'll find there's more than one voice singing in the darkness.

Singing in the darkness, joining with your one voice. Each and every note, another octave, hands are joined and fears unlocked. If only one voice would start out on its own, we need just one voice. Facing the unknown and then that one voice would never be alone. It takes that one, one voice.

Just one voice singing in the darkness. All it takes is one voice. Shout it out and let it ring. Just one voice. It takes that one voice and everyone will see. Once I stood in the light with my head bowed low. I looked in the darkness as black as could be.

Hold my hand all the way. Every hour, every day. From here to the great unknown. Take my hand. Let me stand where no one stands alone. Like a king, I may live in a palace so tall. With great riches to call on my own. But I don't know a thing in this whole wide world.

That's worse than being alone. Hold my hand all the way. Every hour, every day. From here to the great unknown. Take my hand. Let me stand where no one stands alone. Take my hand. Let me stand where no one stands alone. Shop break-resistant glassware at WineEnthusiast.com so you can spend more time and less time-- I'll get the broom.

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