Opportunity Not Depression; Faith not Fear
At long last I can crow, “Age has its privileges-the longer you live the more you have had to endure-good times and bad”.
I‘m reading On Chesil Beach-set in the English countryside in the 40’s-by British writer Ian McEwan in which Lionel, one of the main characters, talks about having to walk or ride a bicycle because the petrol is too dear. In 2008 we bawling American babies act as if the sky has fallen or God has turned on us with the soaring price of gas. We cower in the corner with all the flooding-did anyone ever ask why smart and pre-warned homeowners would build or buy in a flood plain? God, I wonder what the tubbies would do if they had lived in World War II when everything was rationed, especially meat (which according to Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa in Aventura, Florida, causes bloating and mid-section expansion just when you need it to deflate). Okay, so the stock market does up and down like an escalator-down 350 points today-and Federal regulators have increased their search and expose efforts because there are so many crooks in the business of investing your money. So? We are living in a greedy society-all of us to one degree or another can be included in this line-up-so what happened to ‘working for a living and investing with modest return expectations’?
What is going on in the land of ‘O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain…’ is a reflection of each of us at a deep soul level. We have grown up to be credit card junkies-in a stupor to Hollywood glam and egocentric actors and actresses whose lives on and off the silver screen have us mesmerized to the point of having to have what we see and hear and read about-paradise and splendor whether we can afford it or not.
I am not one to preach about family values since I don’t put much stock in family, but I do have a lot to say about why we are in the condition we are-in our own backyard and from the great plains, coast-to-coast, inside and outside the Beltway right up to the hallowed privileged pair living in the White House. We are getting what we deserve and the minute we start claiming our just deserts the clock will start ticking to demark our return to sanity and self-responsibility. Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you do not need to listen to self-serving pundits on television and radio to have it revealed that it is not anyone else’s fault but our own for buying into the nut-house philosophy of borrowing in order to keep up with the Rockefellers.
May I sprinkle your morning java with a little faith instead of the abject fear you have been absorbing since the sub-prime expose starting the gutter ball rolling and panic spreading like the bubonic plague of the Dark Ages? I love clichés especially one that says, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ It is time for all of us to stop the nonsense that Armageddon is just around the corner. No, sir. What is in the here and now and near future is an opportunity to rebuild a better house, brick by brick, and stone by stone.
