Odd thoughts on the current financial crisis
So this may seem like a strange post to many, but what can I say...I rarely think inside the box, and when I do, my thoughts are like little terrified mice, furious over finding themselves in a box, who are scratching at a corner trying to get out. So here goes: My probably odd and unpopular thoughts on the impending economic disaster.
I was having a conversation with my dad about the possibility of a severe recession. Holly and her gang had been talking in worried tones about another depression, so that got brought up as well. My dad said something very interesting. He said, "Well, you know you're grandma and grandpa went through the Great Depression as kids growing up."
"Yes," I said.
He continued, "I noticed that with Grandma and Grandpa...and in fact, many people I've met from that generation...they almost look back on that childhood time with fondness. They talk about how they know the bad economy was a worry to their parents, but that overall, life was not that bad. You were all in it together, you had to be imaginative and inventive to make do with what you had. They couldn't always be buying new toys, so they made their own fun. They look back on it and think that in some ways, having less made it better. They speak of it almost with a sense of longing, of nostalgia for those simpler times."
Okay, I'm a romantic. Sue me. But I have heard my father say this about my grandparents before, and it always struck me that perhaps SOME things about life during the Great Depression were actually better. I think when you can't have whatever you want, whenever you want, it makes you focus more on the business of real life. Now, granted, I've never been through a really serious financial hardship, although right now in my life I'm probably spending less money on myself than I ever have. But people who actually lived during the Depression don't seem to think that it ruined their lives.
I got thinking about what would happen if the country went through another Depression. It might actually slow down the breakneck, greedy, consumer pace of living, a pace which I have been lamenting about for a long time. I wouldn't want people to starve to death or anything, obviously, but I wonder with great curiosity what might be gained by Americans getting humbled a bit in their financial spending. If it slowed the pace of life, took the focus off of possessions, made people frugal and inventive and made them hang out more because they didn't have money for other forms of entertainment...would that be all bad?
In the long run, maybe economic disaster would be all bad, and maybe I don't want it to happen. But there's this little part of me that realizes I will never see life in the true, raw, simple form that my grandparents knew it as as children.
I was having a conversation with my dad about the possibility of a severe recession. Holly and her gang had been talking in worried tones about another depression, so that got brought up as well. My dad said something very interesting. He said, "Well, you know you're grandma and grandpa went through the Great Depression as kids growing up."
"Yes," I said.
He continued, "I noticed that with Grandma and Grandpa...and in fact, many people I've met from that generation...they almost look back on that childhood time with fondness. They talk about how they know the bad economy was a worry to their parents, but that overall, life was not that bad. You were all in it together, you had to be imaginative and inventive to make do with what you had. They couldn't always be buying new toys, so they made their own fun. They look back on it and think that in some ways, having less made it better. They speak of it almost with a sense of longing, of nostalgia for those simpler times."
Okay, I'm a romantic. Sue me. But I have heard my father say this about my grandparents before, and it always struck me that perhaps SOME things about life during the Great Depression were actually better. I think when you can't have whatever you want, whenever you want, it makes you focus more on the business of real life. Now, granted, I've never been through a really serious financial hardship, although right now in my life I'm probably spending less money on myself than I ever have. But people who actually lived during the Depression don't seem to think that it ruined their lives.
I got thinking about what would happen if the country went through another Depression. It might actually slow down the breakneck, greedy, consumer pace of living, a pace which I have been lamenting about for a long time. I wouldn't want people to starve to death or anything, obviously, but I wonder with great curiosity what might be gained by Americans getting humbled a bit in their financial spending. If it slowed the pace of life, took the focus off of possessions, made people frugal and inventive and made them hang out more because they didn't have money for other forms of entertainment...would that be all bad?
In the long run, maybe economic disaster would be all bad, and maybe I don't want it to happen. But there's this little part of me that realizes I will never see life in the true, raw, simple form that my grandparents knew it as as children.