Yesterday I was feeling pretty sad. As I thought more and more about the economic news of the past few weeks, some things began to become clear to me. Usually clarity brings about a sense of calmness and understanding, but what has become clear to me this time brought on only sadness.
The perilous state of our economy during the past few weeks has left many losing a great deal of their hard-earned wealth. This is manifesting its self in lost jobs, foreclosed homes, lack of available loans and lost value in retirement funds and savings.
I have a theory about what this could mean.
There is discussion now about the American Dream being lost. The dream is one of owning your own home, a nice car and having that well paying job that will propel you into a life of luxury. It is essentially the dream of keeping up with the family next door… keeping up with the Joneses. It is about having the bigger house, the greener lawn, driving the nicer car and going on the more exotic vacation than the Jones family next door. You work long hours of overtime at your high paying high stress job to fund the efforts to keep up with the Joneses. In the process you fail to notice your son growing up. You miss his little league games. He loses out on having an attentive father. Without the attention and motivation he needs from his parents... he drops out of high school, becomes addicted to drugs. Your daughter ends up getting pregnant as a teenager because her parents were never home. And since you are working so much, your wife is lonely and resorts to sleeping with Mr. Jones next door. While all this is happening, you are overtaken with impatience and greed on this quest and you manage to bury your self in tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt living beyond your means.
Now that the economy is sliding downhill, we as a nation stand to lose many of these things that we have so readily associated with the American Dream. Call this what you want... fate, coincidence or devine providence but our nation needs this. It is only then, when we have lost these material things, that we will learn as a nation what is of true value to us. Our families... husbands and wives, sons and daughters. Our friends. Our faith. The conversations and moments we share with the people we care about. Our freedoms as Americans! The things that we are blessed with that have little or no material value but are priceless to us.
It makes me so sad it nearly brings me to tears. How much are we going to have to lose as a nation before it is that we realize what we have?
The perilous state of our economy during the past few weeks has left many losing a great deal of their hard-earned wealth. This is manifesting its self in lost jobs, foreclosed homes, lack of available loans and lost value in retirement funds and savings.
I have a theory about what this could mean.
There is discussion now about the American Dream being lost. The dream is one of owning your own home, a nice car and having that well paying job that will propel you into a life of luxury. It is essentially the dream of keeping up with the family next door… keeping up with the Joneses. It is about having the bigger house, the greener lawn, driving the nicer car and going on the more exotic vacation than the Jones family next door. You work long hours of overtime at your high paying high stress job to fund the efforts to keep up with the Joneses. In the process you fail to notice your son growing up. You miss his little league games. He loses out on having an attentive father. Without the attention and motivation he needs from his parents... he drops out of high school, becomes addicted to drugs. Your daughter ends up getting pregnant as a teenager because her parents were never home. And since you are working so much, your wife is lonely and resorts to sleeping with Mr. Jones next door. While all this is happening, you are overtaken with impatience and greed on this quest and you manage to bury your self in tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt living beyond your means.
Now that the economy is sliding downhill, we as a nation stand to lose many of these things that we have so readily associated with the American Dream. Call this what you want... fate, coincidence or devine providence but our nation needs this. It is only then, when we have lost these material things, that we will learn as a nation what is of true value to us. Our families... husbands and wives, sons and daughters. Our friends. Our faith. The conversations and moments we share with the people we care about. Our freedoms as Americans! The things that we are blessed with that have little or no material value but are priceless to us.
It makes me so sad it nearly brings me to tears. How much are we going to have to lose as a nation before it is that we realize what we have?
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