Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Seeing Through The Fog

The last eight months have put us all into a financial fog. Having recently retired, I am acutely aware of the damage done by the Wall Street geniuses paid all those millions supposedly to make money for all of us. We now know for whom they were really working. My comfortable retirement plan is now on a diet, and the future is a lot foggier. Thank you Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, George W. Bush and all the others who took us all for this ride. May you live long and prosper . . . not.

The more time that goes by, however, I begin to see through the fog to the brighter horizon beyond. What's clear to me is that our whole nation grew morbidly obese in the past couple of decades. We ate too much, bought too much, borrowed too much. Now our national health is in such bad shape that we may soon die if we don't change our ways. So it's starting to feel good to me to be on a financial diet, to watch my pennies. It feels responsible and morally correct, the penance required to get through a hangover.

I think a lot about my grandparents these days, the Depression generation. They managed to raise three sons during the 1930s, even though my grandfather was laid off repeatedly from his railroad job. Somehow they paid the mortgage, kept food on the table by growing their own vegetables and chickens, and for a time lived off the coins their boys brought home from selling newspapers on streetcars. They had no luxuries, no savings and only one pair of shoes each. Even so, they shared what they had with neighbors and relatives who had less than they did. They lived their lives with a quiet dignity and integrity, and I greatly admire them for it.

I hope that, as we all navigate the troubled waters of our own day, we find the strength within ourselves to live as well as they did.

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