RULE XII

 On Page 355 of his book, BEYOND ORDER 12 MORE RULES FOR LIFE, Jordan Peterson lays out this rule: "Be grateful in spite of your suffering."

He goes on: "However, even though I regard the inevitability of suffering and its exaggeration by malevolence as unshakable existential truths, I believe even more deeply that people have the ability to transcend their suffering, psychologically and practically, and to constrain their malevolence, as well as the evils that characterize the social and natural worlds.

Human beings have the capacity to courageously confront their suffering--to transcend it psychologically, as well as to ameliorate it practically."

Jordan like me is not an easy optimist, but he is an optimist when the smoke has cleared. We can be grateful to be alive, and to be given life by God, and an opportunity, despite our challenges and afflictions, to improve our lot, and make the world a little better place, to assist the Good Spirts in making earth just a bit more heavenly.