That quality work force was the single biggest reason the U.S. emerged as the economic superpower of the 20th century. Generation after generation, American workers were better educated, more industrious and more innovative than the ones that came before.

That progress stopped about 30 years ago. The percentage of young Americans completing college has been stagnant for a generation. As well-educated boomers retire over the next decades, the quality of the American work force is likely to decline. Mitt Romney captured the consequences in his withdrawal statement: “I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century — still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world.”

–David Brooks

Thoughts, good thoughts, for distraction. It’s snowing outside, and I want to leave and drive north.

So, my quotation from this time last year:

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
-Aristotle

I think I understand this better than I did a year ago. Still have a long way to go. The previous two weekends have demonstrated my greatly increased capacity to push through small instances of misery to achieve my larger aims. I still cannot apply these things to certain areas of my life with much consistency, something I want to fix. What good are strong legs if they don’t take me where I want?

Snowing outside. Sun promised for the long weekend. Let’s all become better.