What inspires you?

This nation has been suffering some fairly bad times for a couple years now. Not only in the financial markets, but also environmentally. We've seen earthquakes, floods, and now an ocean bleeding hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day.

When will it stop? When will we just be able to take a breath? For goodness sake, my 3 year old wants to know if she'll be able to swim in the ocean this summer. She wants to know why the oil is in the Gulf.

It breaks my heart to listen to the reports each day. It's one of the reasons my wife and I long ago rid our house of cable and TV. We get all the news we need from reports via the internet or the newspapers. Even that is overload at times.

Back to my title for this entry - with all of this bad news, how do we keep going? Why do we keep going? For me there are so many reasons that I keep hope close to me. These are the same reasons I get up each day and have a cup of coffee and try my best to do my bit to make this life meaningful. It's not a simple time but my reasons are simple: