Americans, Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps, and Stop Worrying
The Franlkin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington
A Mom of two girls just lost her job. Her husband committed suicide two weeks earlier. I’ll be frank: these are hard times.
While we look at our half-empty glasses, we need to tell ourselves, and our children, that’s it’s merely half-full. Because what we focus on, we attract. What we believe will happen, will surely come to pass. The tragedy could be how we respond.
At the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, visitors are walking up to the sculptural breadline and putting themselves in that line. By standing in that memorial, which was created for another era, the visitors are making starvation all too real for our present age. A Wall Street Journal article (October 18, 2008) quotes Eva Durak, 31 years old, a bartender where business business is down 75 percent. “We’re almost there,” she told her friend, glancing at the bread line. “People are very afraid. I am, too.”
People. Stop the dramatics. Stop this madness. If you must, heed the advice of Guy Kawasaki, who not only says it’s irrational to base our mood on the Dow Jones, but that maybe we should look at other indicators instead. When “The toilet seats at Google are no longer heated,” that’s when you need to start worrying.
When I hear my depression-affected relatives, now healthy 70 and 80 year-olds, talk about the moldly meat they had to pick off the bones so they could eat, I sometimes wonder what right do we have to say these are hard times?
Far from belittling the fact that homes are being lost and college and retirement savings plans are being shriveled up – never has the importance of seeing hope been more important. What we see in our minds, we create. The books we read today will define who we are a year from now.
Watching the stocks over the last few dramatic weeks have been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. We can count on the ride to continue. Every time people start to worry, the stocks fall.
Roosevelt’s fireside chats encouraged Americans to have faith in their banks; faith in their country; and faith in themselves. Wouldn’t he shake his heads to see Americans today using his Memorial as a millennium breadline? This was not the memorial he intended. He wanted instead, a simple block, about the size of his desk.
Instead of poverty, now is the time for Americans to believe in abundance. If you must, start with the leaves falling in abundance from the trees. From that faith, continue to give to your charities that now need you more than ever. Consider that the door closed could also be your open window. Focus on what you love. Who knows where that could lead?
When times are hard, follow Grandma’s advice, reported by Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times, “don’t borrow too much and don’t take too many risks.” I would add one more piece to Grandma’s advice: Seek within to see your world as better than what the news tells you that it is. Because it is.
I was just thinking about this the other day. How a “depression” now is nothing like the depression then. We have become such a SPOILED country. Time to show what we’re made out of!
Wonderful post!
Good post. I think people let the bad times get to them far too quickly. I’m always telling my teenagers to suck it up, life’s not perfect. However, there’s lots to be thankful and grateful for if people will not let fear rule their life.
Excellent, excellent points. Things are NOT that bad.
I think it’s going to take a LOT tougher times than this to give people a true reality check and bring us all back to focussing on what really matters in life. And it’s not stuff.
We are far from a depression. My older relatives grew up in the depression. No shoes to wear, mustard sandwiches, and no two nickles to rub together as they say. People will need to be creative and focus on priorities. A recession which we are having perhaps globally soon is the pure result of fear itself. This is the land of prosperity. Live it!
Few weeks ago we lost power for nearly a week. People did loose their perisables but seemed to gain a sense of family values and develop better relationships with their neighbors. It was nice to get power back but it was also nice to have pause with out all the electronics that seem to run our lives.
Susie,
this is the BEST post!!! I love everything you said. We have just been talking about this very thing.
You stated it all so perfectly and eloquently.
BTW…I’m having a little give away, if you’re interested pop by my blog.
Awesome, awesome post, my friend.
Very wise words, indeed.
Amen, Susie!
Very truly spoken! Thank you.
bravo!
excellent, excellent post susie! I just got back from 21 days in Rwanda – now people who lived through the 1994 genocide where 1000 people died in about 100 days (mostly by neighbors & extended families) they have been through tough times! To think they’d give just about anything for running water which they didn’t have to boil before being able to use & some American’s are worried about how they can afford their next holiday or their second home or maybe even their first home which they bought with nothing down & have a mortgage more than they can handle – that’s NOTHING compared to what others in the world have been through! The US really needs to learn to suck it up & deal (one of my favourite expressions ever!!!!!) Sorry for my mini rant, I’m just so fed up with people complaining when in reality they have a roof over their head, running water, no risk of malaria, didn’t have to watch their mom’s head being taken off by a machete!
right now, people are struggling to get by and you may say that it’s not as bad as the Depression era, but for some of us, it very well is. six months ago, i was healthy and working full time at a computer software company as head of the billing dept, then i started feeling a lot of pain in my abdomen, and lower back and so on. i then tried to work part time from home, but with pain and the meds i was on, i couldn’t so i had to go on short term disability. it’s been six months and the doctors say i have a disease called endometriosis and will need possibly major surgery. during this time of going to dr. after dr. to even get this depressing diagnosis: my std ran out, my savings ran out and my bank account became overdrawn, i was not able to keep up with my bills so my phone was shut off and i had to get a dr. note to get it put back on and i am several months behind in rent. i went to an agency that may help with the rent but it takes time and with all of this, the disease i have is causing me more pain every day. i am waiting for the long term disability to go through but have no idea when that will happen. in the interim, i’ve had to go on food stamps and go to food pantries. my family have helped with money to pay for my 9 prescriptions, and friends have helped with cleaning my apt which i am presently unable to do. my employer saved my job as long as he could (5 mon) but said he will hire someone soon so i may lose the best job i’ve ever had. you may think differently, that we are not in a Depression and maybe statiscally, you are correct since there are no bread lines, however, the unemployment rate has gone up consistently every month for almost a yr now, crimes such as bank and convenience store robbery has risen even to steal $20 and the desperation to get a job, any job, has made people lie on their resumes and take menial jobs when they have college degrees. my point in saying all of this is that some of the above comments made it seem like there is no compassion or empathy for the ones that are in a ‘Depression’. some of us only eat pb & j sandwiches every night, and do have holes in our socks, and at times, only have one dollar to our name. admittedly, my situation differs a little because it’s health related and could’ve happened with our without our economy the way it is, but because our economy is in a Recession, people like me do not get the benefits that we would normally qualify for because the agencies are broke. almost everyone i know is suffering in some way because of the economy. everybody can debate what we call what we’re in now, Depression or Recession, but the point that i want to make is that there are people suffereing and that should not be ignored. maybe we are not hurting like the people in Rwanda but we are hurting and that should not be forgotten.