George

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." --George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, 1788
In the written words of this, truly the father of the American way of life, one can read his wariness of the direction his followers in governance were already desirous of departing from constitutional principles to the point he couldn't or refuse to acknowledge, and knowing full well that it would fall upon him to establish original precedence in the governing of America as a new nation of states. All this with the hope his precedence setting would stabilize the future of American governance.
If he were to see and hear today's governmental leaders he would go back and erase the final phrase in that letter.
The true measure of success in life on an individual or social basis is not wealth, power, influence or celebrity it is within the inherent individual Sovereignty of the minds of mankind. In other words the development of the mind itself, or ones personal psychological development, is which determines success throughout the life of all individuals.
George Washington's last words, “Tis Well”; were meaning personal satisfaction with his own life. Not as historians think he was implying the state of the country. He had many reservations about the future of the country that he played such a pivotal role in creating. He was satisfied with himself and probably the only subjective thought he ever had outside his own family.
The more thought one gives to the lives of others, the less it gives to ones own life. We individually think we understand others and adjust our own thoughts and action based upon this errant thought process. Don't get this confused with narcissism, but if you don't know and understand your own psychological processes you cannot understand yourself, let alone any other, which leaves one to be grasping at straws all through life making the mind a vacuous entity void of value to ones self or any other.
A truly sovereign mind is under the primary control of the objective thought processes, where subjective thought is reserved primarily for the intimate aspects and feelings of life.
Subjective thinking in the activities of society is mostly detrimental to society and ones self. GAP