There is so much ‘doom and gloom’ news from all sectors of the world, especially in the United States, that if one came back from the dead he might suspect that we had come to the end of the world-that everything was about to go up in smoke. One report has the unemployment filings at an all-time high. The stock market is on a rollercoaster and spending has come to a screeching halt.
What is apparent to me is that we are an ‘all-or-nothing’ society. As a nation-perhaps even as a worldview-we either live off credit cards and credit lines and spend like there is no piper to pay at the end of the shopping spree, or we hunker down in our cubbyholes and hold on to our last greenback. There is absolutely no balance in our financial lives.
What’s wrong with this picture? We have no discernment in how we buy or how we save. Fear runs everything. When the brokers were selling us hot air we kept throwing money in the market like that was no tomorrow. Once the renters who were lured by mortgage companies’ “too good to be true” sub-prime packaging, (word omitted) are now in foreclosure because they should never have been in home ownership at all. They could not afford it. But tell that to mortgage managers. I think it’s too little, too late.
As I look back at the supposed ‘fat-cat’ Clinton years in the White House I am not so convinced that a lot of this monetary nonsense did not start with his pie-in-the-sky policies. As much as most of us are so over Bush and can’t wait for the Obama rebuilding and reconstructing, Bush did not single-handedly destroy our economy. You and I did as much to devalue everything by continuing to sign-up and sign-in with our assets. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq contributed to the huge deficit, but I do not for one minute believe that government alone got us to this over-all state of rack and ruin-we are all complicit with the sorry state of affairs-from housing to money markets to runaway spending and little saving.
I tell you what I am doing. I am paying down and paying off debt and suggesting that those who would ordinarily swap presents with me do the same thing. There are children I will remember, spending less on them than in past years, but they so look forward to the Holidays. (After all, they are too young to have joined the mad march to financial disaster) I will sing carols and probably eat too much Christmas cookies and cakes, but I will restrain my desire levels and practice restraint of taste and over-eating. I may ask of those who need food and shelter and clothing, “What can I do for you?” but for the rest of us I will sing my way through the Holidays and face the New Year with less sturm und drang than in past years. There is something to be said for starting the New Year with a clean slate.
Happy Holidays!
Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.
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