Signs of the time?
- Posted by e4 on January 28th, 2008 filed in General
[ This is a guest post from Lise Maring, as originally posted on ROE3. I thought it said a lot, and said it well. Reproduced with permission. ]
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I hear the reports about the roller-coaster ride the stock markets are taking these days. I half-heartedly wonder how my 401ks are doing. Probably not well. My office mate just lost all the gains she had made on hers towards retirement. She figures she’ll be working until she’s 90. But then, she says she has nothing better apparently to occupy her time except work, her boyfriend, her three grown or almost-grown kids, and keeping up with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
I listen to all the political wrangling and am sort of disgusted with it all….I don’t care what stripe the candidates happen to be.
I see all the arguments pro/con about Peak Oil and the impacts on this or that….industrial agriculture for example. I think about whether it really matters that much, since the nutritional quality of the food being grown continues to decrease as nutritional value gives way to ease of harvesting and processing.
I see growing signs that we are no longer citizens but consumers. I called the phone company to disconnect my mother’s service and got connected to the Consumer Support Department. Guess I’m not even a Customer anymore. Time was the Customer was always right. Probably doesn’t apply to a lowly consumer. Is “consumer” now also synonymous with “middle class”?
But then I think about all the wonderful seeds and plants I ordered, and of all of the possibilities for the garden this coming spring (only a matter of months away now) and I immediately feel like I’m surrounded by a sense of life and hope and renewal. All the rest of it doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore, and all that world “noise” sort of fades into the background.
So, if you’re finding yourself caught up in the fear and the uncertainty of these “interesting times we live in”…maybe thinking about something positive that you can do for yourself (and putting in the effort to make it happen) might help brighten your outlook on the
future? At least the immediate future.
There may not be much we can do about the long run. Trying to extrapolate the current set of conditions into the future in a linear
fashion is a great mind game, but probably a waste of time. Just a slight perturbation along the time line can change everything dramatically sometimes. But we can certainly try to enjoy the time we have right here and now by making every second of it as meaningful and content as we can. Contentment is not something to be postponed for the future, after all. Nowhere is it written you have to wait for retirement to be content and at peace with the world. It’s for now as well.
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