Thinking outside the box may help recover

Coping in today’s economy sounds like advice written by someone who still has his job, never lost one or is depositing in excess of 100K per annum in his discretionary fund. I prefer a more descriptive title; I was thinking of something along the lines of the following:

“How I paid my bills while receiving no compensation for my own work?”

“How the bank took my house because I couldn’t pay the $300K mortgage, then they sold it to someone else for $150K?”

“How I kept my sanity while wishing to run screaming through the streets? Maybe that is how I kept my sanity or maybe sanity is only relative.”

Whatever you call it, the difficult times are here. It isn’t a little bump in the road; it is real, painful and knows no favorites. History is peppered with economic depressions.  If decisions had been determined by the objective analysis of historical precedence and current indicators, perhaps, it could have been prevented. Factor in the reality of personal agendas, politics, human nature and voila’ you have the inevitable economic debacle.

Rather than pondering the “why,” it is more productive to address the “what now,” a question that colors hours of my own thoughts.

Remember the saying, “There but for the Grace of God go I?” Well, it is bunk! Who in their right mind thinks that God is behind this mess? A truer statement would be, “There but for the twists and turns of life, go I.” It will benefit no one to blame this on God or for that matter, to point fingers at those less fortunate declaring, “Gee, I wonder what idiotic mistake they made or what they did to make God mad?” Ill fortune happens to the best of us and the sooner we come to understand that ideology the more quickly we will recover.

I don’t have the big answers, the ones that will ultimately heal the economy, but I am a survivor. If sharing my bag of tricks helps anyone then it will have been worth the effort. For certain, things will change! In the interim it is imperative that we hang on, a task that requires creativity, diligence, hard work, resilience and compassion. 

The other day, I asked my grandson to define success. He said, “It was to have a good job, nice house and a nice family.” Poor child had no idea what Pandora’s Box he had opened and for the next 30 minutes we talked about what was a “good” job and “nice” house. It was clear that in his mind both required large sums of money. After praising his inclusion of a supportive family, I described another view of success that might entail work that was extremely rewarding but came with less than a massive paycheck.

Our current value system is all wrapped up in money and more of it. We measure our personal worth, success, integrity, credibility, and intelligence by the condition of our bank account. Is it any wonder that we spiral into a black hole of self-deprecation when our financial resources hit a dry spell? 

We have the power to change! We can start by taking responsibility and asking others, particularly the local governmental leaders to think outside the box. The same-old same-old thinking is ineffective and disabling.

Until next week, be well.