EDGEWATER, Fla. -- As I was bemoaning the fact that what meager amount of money I had in my 401K before I became disabled was now rapidly dwindling as the recession killed the stock market it came to me. We are being forced to return to our roots, so to speak.
This country had gotten so out of control we were like a runaway train about to derail economically, morally, and most other ways as well. And derail we did but it was actually a good thing. I know this won’t be a popular idea to many, but didn’t this recession make us rethink how we live? We Baby Boomers all want the world to go back to the way things were when we were growing up.
You know, the Beaver Cleaver days where Mom was home when the kids got back from school, families ate dinners together, there was one car in the family and a modest house with cookies baking in the oven, crime was not so horrendous as it is these days or maybe we just didn’t hear about it since the media was not such a giant out of control mob, and so on. Aren’t we sort of back there in many ways? So many of us were living beyond our means with multiple credit cards maxed to their limits because we did not police ourselves. We wanted it, we got it whether we could afford it or not. Our kids had to have all the “cool” clothes or were chastised at school by the other kids so parents broke their backs and bank accounts to get them and save kids that embarrassment. It goes on and on.
Now we have had to reign in our spending and change our way of thinking. We have to ditch those credit cards, maybe even the second car to enable us to pay our mortgages and keep our homes. Although many moms have no choice but to work and add that second paycheck, families seem to be becoming more cohesive units. The million extracurricular activities for the children are just not affordable nor is the gas at its current price to ferry them around so they are at home more. More families are sitting down to dinner together, sharing their days and becoming closer. I am certainly not advocating a recession. I hate that we have so many homeless due to the real estate companies and banks allowing people to buy homes they knew they couldn’t afford. During the Great Depression when the homeless men road the rails in search of work people helped each other. If a rail rider came to the back door they were given food or the few pennies the household could afford when they had little themselves. It was an awful time, but the citizens of this country went through it with dignity. We’ve been the “me generation" too long. It’s time to be open to helping our fellow man, preserving our wild animals instead of hunting them, recycling to minimize the garbage along our roads and seashores, being real citizens of the planet. Seems to me this recession is moving us in that direction more and more each day. And that’s a good thing.