Act 2

(Husband sits in his easy chair and looks at the audience)

Husband: "Welcome to the modern world. A world where 2 trillion dollars can
evaporate in a day.

I'm glad I passed on our family's annual business meeting this weekend in California. By the time my wife and daughter arrived in Chicago to change planes for
San Francisco, the market had already dropped 418 points.

I could have used a weekend at that beautiful luxury resort on the California coast.
Walking on the spectacular beach with exotic driftwood. Wading in the glorious frothy surf and feeling the sweet breeze from Hawaii.

But I'm content staying here. I don't have a "home" anymore, I'm just "here." Being alone. It gives me time to think.

Thank God it's Friday. I can just picture the cocktail parties on
Martha's Vineyard this weekend. They won't be talking sports.

If I was ten years younger, I'd use this time to escape. I'd be packing my bags and on my way to the airport. To where? Anywhere. Singapore. Hong Kong. I'd just jump the open-air prison fence where I live and I'd be on my way. Just like Morgan Freeman at the end of the movie Shawshank Redemption. On my way to better life.

It's great being alone and walking around the yard, remembering all the happy times when our children would run and play and rough house with each other running barefoot in the grass. That's gold that no thief can steal.

Sure, I'll miss our beautiful country home. But I'd be a fool to complain. Ten years in a wonderful location is worth much more than money. And the money that I have lost this past year by being frozen out of the gold market by my wife's "court order" - well, I have to say that it pissed me off for a day or two. But in a way
it has helped to give me a more philosophical perspective on everything: money, life, health, freedom. I mean you can't take it with you. So who really cares if you
have ten instead of twenty gold coins in safe deposit box?

Well, for ten years, I did have gold coins in a safe deposit box. I had rolls and rolls of them at a bank in Toronto. It didn't make me any happier or wiser. One day I sold the coins. Hey, maybe that's why my wife is giving me such a hard time about
gold and silver?! For being such a fool for selling all that physical gold?! OK, I admit it. I was a fool. Young and foolish.

I guess that's the whole point that I am dealing with. You are who you are. The moment you pretend to be someone else, well, guess what? You've created your own
open-air prison! And because you are being a fool, chances are, unless you are a wise old men or woman, you are not going to admit it. You are going to spend your precious energy protecting your foolishness,. In doing so, you will never experience
the real you.

Reading 'one of those websites' early this morning, you know, the ones written by people who don't bow down to the Federal Reserve Bank,, people who have read history and understand that history always likes to throw some surprises that challenge the souls of nations every forty years.

Well, I came across a post that ended by asking "have any of you gone from nut job to messiah in the past week?" Reading those words, something clicked and typed in
the following words as a reply:

You want some gold now honey? Here's my wedding ring. I've placed the house in your name. Oh, and the summer house too. Goodbye.

There! I said it! Instantly the spell was broken.

Hey, if I am walking down a dark street at night in a tough part of town, and a 300 pound hood yells at me, 'Hey jerk! I don't like you!' sure, I'll move to the other
side of the street and try to gracefully disappear. But when that someone who is laughing in your face, insulting you, mocking you, ridiculing you and that person
is the person you are married to, well, you got a problem. Of course there is a time where appeasement has its place. But when the hills outside of Rome are in flames, and the smoke starts drifting over the city gates, only a fool does nothing.

I've read it here and there, words about the importance of being mentally prepared.
Now I understand it. Mental preparation is more important that riches, possessions
or 'status, etc. With it you have a destiny. Without it, you are just a shell of a person going through the motions of pretend living.

Like Morgan Freeman knew, true freedom is not "out there." It's in your heart and mind. This is what I've learned this month. If I fall prey to thinking that my freedom lies in a stack of gold coins in a cold steel bank vault, then who's the
fool? Who's the Scrouge who has forgotten to love his neighbors? A man like that may walk the world with a full belly and sleep in satin sheets, but he will miss the priceless blessings that exist all around him.

Thank you wife for pissing me off enough to understand this.

The sad thing about my situation is that I am married to one of the most amazing women in the world. I don't say that lightly. It's just a fact. Added to this is that she could have been a famous movie star or model. She has that type of charismatic beauty and timeless grace. And then add to this that she is an amazing homemaker, the kind that gets down on her knees to scrub the bathroom floor. One would think that such a woman would intuitively understand the concept of storing food in one's home.

But living for more time than I wish to admit in a real-life theater of the bizarre finally got to me. When a man isn't happy to be in paradise, that's a sign. And so it was a week ago when I woke up in the guest room of our summer house. The full moon
lit up fields around our house. I tipped toed outside into the evening air, as shooting stars blazed across the dark sky. Returning to my bed, I knew something was
happening but didn't know what. I lay in bed experiencing this unknown feeling and stopped caring if I fell back to sleep.

Sitting at the breakfast table as the sun rose and the family lay sleeping, I noticed it. I was shaking, the way a child shakes after swimming in a cold lake.
But I wasn't in a lake, I was in my own home.