Years ago, when the internet was beginning to blossom for businesses around the world, I traveled the world teaching people how to take their businesses to the web.
One of my colleagues had a poem he liked to quote at the end of his presentation and it has stuck with me since.
It’s words are cause for self-examination. A personal inventory of our character and kind of people we really are.
As I watch the candidates, their campaigns, their staff and zealous followers in this presidential race of 2016, the words to this poem become even more compelling and acute.
I watched them tearing a building down, 
A gang of men in a busy town.
With a ho-heave-ho and lusty yell,
They swung a beam and a sidewall fell.
I asked the foreman, “Are these men skilled,
As the men you’d hire if you had to build?”
He gave me a laugh and said, “No indeed!
Just common labor is all I need.
I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken a year to do.”
And I tho’t to myself as I went my way,
Which of these two roles have I tried to play?
Am I a builder who works with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Am I shaping my deeds by a well-made plan,
Patiently doing the best I can?
Or am I a wrecker who walks the town,
Content with the labor of tearing down?
~ Charles Benvegar
What are you?
Which category do your words, actions, and interactions on social media or in person place you in?
