I don’t think there is any disputing this statement. It is clear, concise and straight forward. Are Billerica’s leaders helping people and institutions to learn to accept change and to embrace it [adjust]?

Here I would dispute the premise that one must sacrifice self-interest in order to lead. It is possible to lead while preserving the right to self-interest of those being led and one’s own self-interest. For instance one could easily state, because our founding fathers pledged their wealth, their honor and their lives to the revolution, that they sacrificed their own rational self-interests. However, because something is easy to state, it does not, necessarily, make the statement true.

While it is true that they did, in fact, sacrifice some important self-interest items; it was in their own rational self-interest to fight to shed the cloak of tyranny imposed on the colonies by King George. They put at risk their honor, their wealth and their lives in exchange for liberty, which, to them held a higher value than all of the others combined. What good is honor if you have to bow to a master? What good is wealth if it can be stripped from you on the whim of a king? What good is life if you have to live it as a slave or under the dictates and terms of another? When these questions are used to round out the context of the whole, it becomes easier to see that our founders did, in fact, act in their own rational self-interest while fighting to help gain and to keep liberty for themselves and those fellow countrymen who fought under their direction. Or as Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have written: “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”.

Now, let’s take a role of a different sort and examine the role of not exercising rational self-interest principles and philosophy: There was a man, who spent his younger years in the home of parents who had a questionable history of checkered dealings in the world of finance. In fact, at one point, the SEC ordered their business closed leaving them with a $13,000.00 tax lien that went unpaid for 9 years. At the time, their son, Bernie Madoff, had relatively little interest in the financial world and held a job as a lifeguard and a sprinkler installer.

Ultimately, he put $5,000.00 that he’d saved to form, along with his wife, Ruth, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. He aquired some impressive clients, such as Stephen Spielberg, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewich, and the rest is hostory. Word of mouth that he was providing a reliable 10% on investment led to more and more wealth and famous clients [this demonstrates, clearly, that talented does not equate to intelligent], who made deals with his firm. Bernie and Ruth lived what appeared to be a charmed life with opportunities and wealth beyond belief, and yet, according to Bernie Madoff’s own words, he was not happy. Bernie, immediately after his arrest, stated and continues to state, frequently, that he spent “20 years looking over my shoulder, waiting for the axe to fall and my life as I knew it to end.”

Additionally, he states that the worst part of prison and the aftermath of his actions is the loss of contact with his family and the loss of their love. Bernie traded these valuable commodities of love and companionship for money and now realizes that the money and all that came with it was of lesser value. But, his recognition comes too late, and he only got there because he failed to grasp the concept of the word “rational” and it’s importance in defining one’s “self-interest” as it pertains to the philosophic foundation that guides our day to day lives and pursuit of happiness.

We are all born alone, and I believe that we will all die alone. Sure, someone may sit by our side, holding onto our hand and whispering how much they love us as we pass; but, they will not accompany us on our journey – they can’t. Some may want to, others may try to, but none will succeed. In my view, when their lives end; they, like us, will take their own journey, if there is one to take. And if there is no journey, our bodies will rest alongside each other, or they will be reduced to ash and spread on the wind or the sea or on some grief-striken relative’s mantle totally unaware of who or what is around them. This is similar to the fate Bernie Madoff’s unguided pursuit of happiness has led him to.

He is now a shadow among the world of the living. He resides among strangers to whom he has no ties, no emotions, no personal investment and from whom he gets no love, no understanding, no sympathy and no joy. One son is dead as a consequence of Mr. Madoff’s action. The other siblings will not speak with him, and one son will not have anything to do with his mother because of her choice to stand by Bernie when he was clearly a villain because she loved him enough to want to die with him [foolishly thinking that they would travel the infinite dimensions of eternity together - because faith told her it was so]. He will never feel love as powerful as that again.

Anyone who claims that Bernie Madoff was acting selfishly in his own rational interest is speaking from a position of ignorance or willful suspension of reality. Bernie Madoff was selfish and acted selfishly as people have come to define the word, but he was not rationally selfish because he lost sight of which was the higher value and pursued that which led him to his own private hell where he will not only die alone, but he is also condemned to live alone from this point forward like one of so many motionless corpses existing in so many individual, sealed off graves.