Desperation

A few months ago, my dad told my sister and me about a cousin in Virginia. I found it hard to remember if I had even met the guy. My dad told us that he had been laid off from a job that he held for about 20 years. He couldn’t find another job and he fell into a serious depression. One day, he wrote a note to his wife and wrote a note to his mother. He then went to a parking lot and killed himself. Despite the fact that I couldn’t remember him, I found the news disturbing. I know that times now are hard, but I think that anyone would agree that is extreme.

Unfortunately, he isn’t the only one who has felt the effects of economic displacement. There are plenty of people who have decided to off themselves over lost money or a lost job. There are many more that have sunken into deep depression over these issues. They do themselves what may become irreparable harm by allowing these circumstances to dominate their consciousness and to dictate how they should feel about themselves.

There seems to be no way to convince these people that they shouldn’t base their life worth on how much money they have or control. I have been through the same kind of circumstances. The day of George W. Bush’s first inauguration I was laid off from the best job I ever had. Not realizing that the economy was going to take a severe downturn in my industry, I turned down a wonderful opportunity to go elsewhere. It was a big mistake that cost me. I thought that because I had this fantastic education, great experience, and a set of credentials to back up my experience that I would immediately get picked up by a local firm.

I was totally wrong. I ended up finding nothing. Time passed and I ran out of money. I really started to get down on myself. There were mornings that I didn’t want to get out of bed. I shed a few tears and even spent a lot of time staring at a matte steel .44 magnum that I owned. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but some really bad and hurtful ideas came to mind. I got so upset that I damn near gave myself ulcerative colitis. All of this was complicated by fracturing my foot on a vacation designed to reduce my stress levels. I moped around like my world had ended. In a way, it did.

The only way that I got past it was to work on something else. I ended up spending a lot of hours with my brother at the county courthouse doing research. We managed to make some connections and do some legal work to clear up the title to my mother’s house – something that thousands of dollars spent on lawyers didn’t accomplish. It helped me restore my confidence in my abilities. I also realized that none of what I was experiencing was life and death. I also got to the point where I understood that I was the one hurting myself. Finally, I found out that I was not the only person having those thoughts or those experiences.

Money is a tool. It is a means of communicating and standardizing value. The only reason that it has value is that we gave it value. That’s it. What was created to be a helpful tool has become the means of our enslavement. I hate seeing people debasing and hurting themselves and others over a desire to gain money. Money is necessary, but it isn’t life. Even if it is lost, it can be regained.

I am looking around and seeing this huge and profound wave of desperation gripping everyone. I see people being distorted and beaten down over misplaced values and desires. Watching people, especially those I care about, experience all of these terrible feelings and their repercussions is almost as bad as experiencing those feelings. I just want to pull out a bullhorn and shout, “This is bullshit.” I want to shake people and tell them that this is just an illusion and all they really have to do is wake up and make some different choices and the nightmare will go away. More than anything, I want to tell them that it is not their fault.

Right now, I wish that I could make people understand that we are experiencing a radical paradigm shift. Old principles are passing away and giving way to new principles. Things that used to work just aren’t valid anymore. Things that were hidden are coming to the surface and lies that held us in place are crumbling. The people that constructed these lies can’t scramble fast enough to put up new lies. I really think that we are at a point where, individually and collectively, we can redefine ourselves and get closer to what we really ought to be. At the very least, that is my objective.