I'd like to try something new and exciting. I am offering you, my readers, the opportunity to become a guest columnist for this column. All you need is an idea. I will ghost write your column for you and return the credit back to you. Just email me at the address below with your idea and I will get back to you.

My wife, Stacie Strack, has volunteered to be the first guest columnist. Here's what she has to say.Who are you?You might believe you have your own thoughts and your own free will, but I doubt it. I mean, when you speak your mind, most likely, you're eliciting ideas put there by other voices that have influenced you to walk their talk.Perhaps you are loyal to the propaganda of the Republican or Democrat platform. You proudly call yourself a liberal or a conservative. You don't realize that government officials want you to "follow the leader" just like you did in the game by the same name that you played when you were a child. Look down their list of manufactured minds and you just might find your name there.We tell our young generations to be individuals, to question the facts, and to trust their own intuitions. We encourage them to choose Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" so they can become the persons their souls intend them to be.But then, you look around and you see so many of our youth are consumed by the glamour and glitz they see in the entertainment world. Look at the number of fans who adore Beyoncé. Rather than seeing through her superficiality, teens and young adults envy her beauty and crave her wealth.So who really are we in this storm of mind control?What happened to our critical thinking skills we were supposed to learn when we were in school? We desperately want to hitch our wagon to the next media star who grabs a microphone in front of a crowd that's been told to applaud when someone holds up the "cheer louder" sign. We trust that whomever is president of this country will improve our lives while we just sit on our couches and wait for him to deliver happiness to us in gift-wrapped boxes.Gone are this nation's leaders who told us America was our country. It was John F. Kennedy who said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."Grand illusions become our downfall in debt. We are led to believe that the more we buy the happier we will be, and it all can happen with just the swipe of a credit card.Why think for ourselves when Google can think for us? Why challenge the "fact" in a history book that Christopher Columbus discovered America? After all, if it's in a book, it must be true.Authorities of food corporations tell us what to eat. Little do we know that what we put in our mouths can cause cancers or other illnesses that make us run to doctors' offices where we get medicines to help us feel better. And yet, all too often, the chemicals in the pain pills are more damaging than the illnesses. If we eat better and take care of our bodies we will be less dependent on doctors to fix problems we can prevent with healthier lifestyles.The powers of society seek to control us within a perfect storm of fear that strips away our ability to be self-reliant. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Society is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members … nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own minds."Too many of us fall prey to seductive persuasions that keep us living inside a prison of false reality. We get knocked down by powerful corporations, and instead of fighting back in large numbers we give control of everything we think and do to the 1 percent of the wealthiest.Just turn on the TV tonight and find somebody's ideas to believe, another pretty face to want, a new set of words to speak.Perhaps we should put down the remote, look at ourselves in the mirror and ask, "Who do I want to be?" Then make a plan of life to become who we are supposed to be.American philosopher Manly P. Hall wrote, "Wisdom lies in not seeing things. It comes from seeing through things."If we open our eyes, we open our minds to self-truth, and only then can we find our peace.Anyone interested in being a guest columnist can contact Rich Strack at

katehep11@gmail.com.