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We take this opportunity to wish our readers a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and a prosperous and healthy New Year. We are blessed, each of us, with a profession that, in the end, does good for the world in general and does good for friends, family and associates in particular.

The most cynical book ever written may well have been Swift’s, Gulliver’s Travels. I read it as a high schooler at Mt. St. Michael Academy and once again, for Lit. Crit. in college.

By chance, I took it up again just recently and came upon an accompanying letter that Swift wrote in November 1725 to Alexander Pope the renowned poet. Here’s what he wrote:

When you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is towards individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one…But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell.

I am generally not given over to moralizing, but it is true that’s its very easy to have anger and to direct bad feelings toward a group as a whole, but, in fact, to have affection for a member of the group in the particular. As insurance professionals—- and here is where these observations may properly find their way onto this page— the level of care one genuinely exerts toward the insured, toward the insured’s destiny and toward the ultimate outcome of insuring, is the key to caring for individuals even if their class or group is annoying – like “claimants” or “needy customers.” As long as insureds never become stereotypes or merely mailing list entries or indifferent inventory or, worse, plain old irritants, and as long as they are treated as valuable individuals, you have a guarantee of success for many, many years to come…and an answer to cynics in the office and in the business and public squares who whine and moan and demoralize…all the way to the bank.

It’s about really caring one person at a time and learning to tolerate the tediousness of the process, all the time prizing and caring for those served by it.

All the best from all of us at CINN and your Insurance Advocate.