Yesterday I spoke of love and forgiveness with brevity. Yet today, my thoughts drift toward those who stand at the very pulpit of power — the conjurers of currency, the central bankers who produce wealth as if by divine fiat, slapping pompous names upon their alchemy: “quantitative easing,” “yield curve control,” and other hollow incantations. Oh, these economic priests, how they delight in labeling their trickery with erudite nonsense so that the masses remain entranced!
I call them “clowns” with the warmest smile I can muster. Yes, they are men who sit convinced of their own virtue as they inflate the air around us all. Still, I do not rage against them. I forgive them. Not because they deserve it — most do not — but because forgiveness liberates me, and liberation is a rare currency no central banker can print.
My father told me tonight at dinner: ABCM — Always Be Challenging Myself. Indeed, all growth is forged in adversity, in wrestling with one’s own mediocrity. Let us not shrink from these struggles; let us meet them head-on, for to push against one’s limits is to defy stagnation. As the strong oak is strengthened by fierce winds, so too we become greater by confronting the hardest truths. The muscle of the soul grows not in comfort, but in the joyful war against ourselves.
And so I circle back to these money-magicians. What is this endless printing but a legalized form of counterfeiting? One must laugh at the absurdity. They are not merely bending the rules; they have redefined the rules, pretending to be guardians of an economic temple while pilfering its coffers. Evil? Perhaps. Yet I say again: I forgive them. I’d likely be no better were I gifted a money printer; I, too, would be tempted to conjure comfort and delight out of thin air. Let us not lie to ourselves — any mortal would yield to such easy corruption. Who among us is so saintly as to resist?
Ah, but is not this inability to resist precisely why we must be grateful we hold no such unholy scepter? Stripped of that temptation, we remain free to earn our daily bread honestly, to savor the sweetness of overcoming difficulties rather than dissolving them in an orgy of printed wealth. And in that honest struggle, we become something more than beasts chained by greed. We polish our souls, we become worthy — dare I say noble.
Forgive these unholy printers of currency, for in doing so we acknowledge the universal fallibility of humankind. We mirror back their folly and choose not to replicate it. Instead, we sharpen ourselves against the grindstone of challenge, standing as living proof that there is goodness — radiant, unafraid goodness — glowing in the cracks of this corrupt world. Live with gratitude, seize the day’s trials with bare hands, and remember what the Stoic Seneca once taught us: “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Indeed, so let us suffer less by imagining more nobly — and through our gratitude, our hardship, and our refusal to hate, we may ascend beyond the petty illusions conjured by those who cannot help but reach for the printing press.
12/6/24
Conor Jay Chepenik
