Tonight I would like to take some time out to put a little bit of a different perspective on the economic crisis that the media frenzy gorges itself on at our expense. With that in mind I would also like to say that I am going to try very hard to abstain from certain aspects of that topic.
In these hard time we are asked to take a look back in history and remember other periods of economic distress. I was told, since I do not watch the news, that recently the media has been displaying images from the "Great Depression" of the 1930's, showing people standing in soup lines and such. This got me to thinking about the 1930's, which made me think about my late grandmother (Jane). It made me wish, a so many things do, that she was still around to talk to and to put things into perspective. You see the kids of the last 3 generations really, which includes you "baby-boomers," generation X and Y, have really never had to face "hard times." Especially the newest of these, the gen x and y groups, whose idea of hard times is not getting the latest electronic portable whatever you call it, do0dad.
I feel privileged to be a gen x/gen y kid who was raised by a ....gen v? (if you want to do things alphabetically). I was raised by my grandmother, who knew the true meaning of what hard times were.
She was born in 1916 just after the end of the first world war. She was 6 when her father died and she, her little sister and her mother moved out from her fathers parents farm to the wide world. She was not 16 when "The Great Depression" took hold of this country. The three of them moved all over the U.S., like so many others of the time, as her mother followed work where ever she could find it, in order to keep a roof over their heads. Jane was about my age when she signed up to be among the few, proud ladies of the WASP's (Women Air force Service Pilots) in WWII (she even has memorabilia in their museums). WWII meant food stamps and rationing, just in case you didn't know. Resources needed to be saved for the war effort and for our allies over seas which meant that everyone had to be frugal, in fact very few if any "new" cars, outside of those made for the military were even being produced (check it out see if you can find a 1940's era car and most of them if they exist look verbatim 1930's). She and my grandfather (Sam) raised their two girls during the Cold War era (remember the red scare and "goodnight and good luck"?) when you didn't know who your friends were and who your enemies were.
The purpose of this is to say that I have/had 5 amazing grandparents (Jane (D. 2007), Sam (D.2006), Ruth (I love you Gram!!), Edna (D.2002), and Pat (D.2001)) who are the most generous, kind, and humble people that I have ever known. I believe that this is due in large part to what they had to come through and what they experienced in their lives.
So perhaps this economic crisis can serve another purpose other than just a morally crushing blow to our society. For me, at least, it puts back into perspective what is really important in my life. It's not my car or my iPod, it's not my cell phone, my computer, T.V., or stereo. Take all that away and I will still have what is most important to me. I have my family, the people who love me, I have my friends, I have my health, head and my belief that things will not always be this way and that after everything is said and done, at least some of us will be the better for it in one way or another.
The winds may howl, and the sky may part and bolts of lightening may fall setting this world ablaze in the night,
but the clouds will clear, the sun will peak its weary head over the horizon
and the world will awake anew,
clean, beautiful, mournful of what has past but calm, serene
like the ocean after a storm.
Take heart my friends and do not spend your time in despair,
"for this too shall pass" and you will find the strength, that which you thought you had lost.
An original poem by: Kathryn Malone
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