Few people know it, but the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) are modeled on the Swiss Army. When the IDF was in its formative stage in 1948, you might have found a few Swiss Army advisers among the troops. They were, after all, from the small country that had kept the Nazi war machine at bay until Normandy.

Came the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Syria, Egypt and others. Through a miscalculation of Israeli intelligence, the Arab forces caught the Israelis completely by surprise. Nobody was prouder than the Swiss when six days later, Israeli tanks were at the gates of Damascus.

Now the Swiss disdain tank warfare; tanks are useless in mountainous country. But the IDF had adapted to their flat territory. We learn by adapting. A small desert country had conquered an aggressive, hostile Islamic and larger force.

In times past, humans referred to original sin as a tendency in all humans to do evil. Knowing what we do now through evolution about our descent through the “swamp,” this makes sense. Animals don’t distinguish between good and evil, though they might understand what pleases their master and what doesn’t. Having come up through the animal kingdom, we do have a tendency to do anything, whether it is good or evil.

To be sinless was achieved by one man, Jesus Christ, and through him, by his mother, Mary, which is what many Christians denote by the term, Immaculate Conception. I’m not going to split hairs over the terminology, but suffice it to say, that is why I pray to Jesus Christ, often through Mary, a person muy sympatico.

And so I make my way through life. Yes, I have goals and I think by achieving them, though I may have already failed at some now and in the past, I’m making sense out of my existence. Sure, I was born with original sin already ingrained in my persona or soul, but those medieval theologians in the past, and I, now, feel that I was baptized into a Twenty-first Century existence.

Recently I traveled eight miles to see my son, and since it was about nine a.m. he invited me to have breakfast. We had an interesting discussion, and he mentioned that he’d stopped paying attention to dreams, since they didn’t make sense. When I got home, I thought, they’re like my life — I so want them to make sense.

I think I’m getting to that goal. The answer is my commitment. I’m married to a woman that I recently took to a Mass dedicated for parents who have lost children. We lost two. As I stood in the pew I turned to her, and she was sobbing. I didn’t recall her like that ever.

I said to myself in that nonverbal way we think, “See that you help this woman for the rest of your life.” Commitment. This woman had delivered three sons, for me, whether I admitted it or not. She had gone with me through the pains of raising them, the joys, the travails, the glories (I could tell you what the rapamycin is doing now for dogs’ lives). In the end, God will give it sense, if only I can see it.

Hey, millennial, is humankind so bad now that you’re giving up? Leaving your religion, your admiration of key individuals, and becoming what they once called a misanthrope? It’s not just offenders like Hitler and Stalin, Marx and Mao (note the gradations of bad) but people who live near you? (The news thrives on offenders, remember.)

You mean good people no longer inspire you? I don’t just mean Jesus Christ or George Washington, but people you never heard of, like Henry Dunant, Clara Barton, Isaac Jogues, George Washington Carver, Niels Bohr, Chief Joseph, and the list goes on.

Well I know enough good people to keep me sane, to keep me facing reality, and I know enough about evolution to realize we all come from the swamp. I face each marvelous new day with some anticipation, and believe it or not, some wonder. I know how to keep myself from being an offender (that’s a hard-earned accomplishment), and that’s the merry way to which I intend to adhere. In this wonderful time of human festivity, it’s no insult to be called child-like.

I don’t know of any other civilization that lets its octogenarians stop working and retire. Of course, millionaires do that in every civilization, but for the common man? True, it’s not for everybody, but it is something to work for. Western Civilization has even worked out institutions where the elderly are farmed out, relieving the offspring from what would be their duty.

But wouldn’t it be their duty in another civilization, too? Yes, Western Civilization has advanced beyond the others in its kindness to strangers, the poor, the disabled, but at home there’s still free will, and we can choose evil over good.

I know I would rather grow old among the people I know, here in the land of the Lord. I live among the people I helped to mature and to carry out the works of mercy and wisdom, and they are a joy to me. I misled nobody intentionally (God forgive me if I did; we never know how our actions will turn out). But its been a great Odyssey–my own!