Here’s a tough one! Commandment number eight: “Only good things happen. Be valuable. Demonstrate your value. Get paid!”

The first part is the belief that only good things happen, and if you take this literally and start spouting this view around in public, you are going to get into lots of passionate arguments, and be given convincing proofs that it just ain’t so. There are plenty of bad things happening out there in the world. Here is the point: events are not good nor bad in and of themselves. They just are. It is an event, a happening, an action/reaction. The occurrence is not a good occurrence or a bad occurrence. It is something that occurred in space and time. The attributes of good, evil, bad, timely, lucky, unlucky, fortunate, or unfortunate are solely of our own creation. We attribute states upon events, but even in the best of attributions, these are just ideas and opinions from our minds. We can decide that what might be unpleasant from our perspective might be good from another.

You can use Hurricane Sandy as an example. It was a massive and powerful weather system. In and of itself it was nothing other than itself, no attributions required. Now, there were fatalities, and depending on your beliefs about death, this was either good or bad for those individuals—lucky or tragic, transcendent or definitively final. You really can have any attribution you can think of here and support it effectively. So let’s agree that it was bad for them, but was it good for anyone connected to them? How about their heirs or desperately and patiently waiting recipients of organ donation? So what is this? Yin and Yang? Some suffering and some benefit? Typically yes, but do you care? How much you care depends on your degree of connection to the participants in, around, or near the event … because we are emotional human beings, and that is how it works for us.

Let’s get back to the idea that “only good things happen.” The things/happenings are neutral, but the fact that they happen is good. It demonstrates and confirms the working of the universe, moment by moment. I choose to attribute the ongoing functioning of the universe to be a good thing, for when things stop happening, we will no longer be here. This is a comforting perspective, especially in the face of disaster. The true warrior looks to the silver lining and rejoices in its discovery. This beats being depressed, disillusioned, and upset when events are judged to be in opposition, uncomfortable, difficult, challenging, or outright damaging and destructive. With this positive frame of mind, the true warrior brings value to the table, a positive contribution worthy of compensation.

Be valuable. Bring value. Contribute and share your wisdom, strength, and skill, and you will reap the rewards. Be someone we want to be around and have around; be an asset, not an ass. You are warriors, and you are in great demand. So it is written.