The Ground Zero Memorial rings true of the deep and universal heartache caused by 9/11. Likewise, we may be feeling the impact of our era of economic woes for many years to come. At last count, fifteen million Americans remain unemployed, and millions of other small business owners are struggling to stay afloat. Many businesses have either thrown in the towel, or are treading water, hoping to make it to the next payroll. Each and every one of us is feeling the shock and pain of the cracks forming in our foundation, the reduction of our incomes and radical lifestyle changes that we are forced to make. Almost no one has been left unscathed. We seem to be pining away for a new sense of purpose and belonging. Many of us are middle aged Americans, who have spent the better part of our lives in one discipline, only to have it lopped off at the pinnacle of our career. We wonder and ponder how we will compete. We face the daunting task of planning for retirement. We contemplate returning to school to create a new niche or to explore a new specialty. We rack our brains to find that new competitive edge, with scant marketing dollars. We are figuring out a way to perform two or three jobs at once, and are multi-tasking ourselves into a state of constant interruption. We are morphing so fast that we cannot develop a routine or protocol to adapt to the change. Change is coming in a surge, unwelcome and without mercy for the timid.
During our years of plenty, we grew accustomed to growth in our salaries, appreciation of our real estate, and access to cash. Lots of it. It was as if God opened up the spigot. But, as is the case with all good things, I suppose, the tide had to pull back. We just didn’t want it to be now. We were lulled into a deep sleep like Dorothy. But, when we woke up, we were not in Oz. Instead, the grim reaper came knocking.
The American tradition of bipartisanship has turned into an ugly political war. Its been each party for itself, and every man for himself. Except for the Goldman Sachs elite who pocketed their spoils, the rest of us started to count our pennies, hid and cowered, and plotted our individual roadmaps for escape.
I heard a discussion the other day on satellite news radio of periods of American history with the highest government approval rating. The aftermath of 9/11 was one of them. After the cloud of white ash settled, and a lot of the tears had been shed, Americans grew closer. Suddenly many of our differences seemed to evaporate. We were able to overlook conflict in order to comfort one another. We were able to drown out the dissonance by speaking as one voice. By way of comparison, the recession and its economic fallout has had the opposite effect. We seem gloomier, and more fragmented than ever. Our anger has divided us into new political groups like the Tea Party Movement.
What if there was a way to bond and heal, like after 9/11? What if there was a virtual Financial Ground Zero? Perhaps we could begin again to find common ground. Perhaps we can begin to mend the disconnect between us and our congressional leaders, and soften the apathy for our neighbors’ plight.
We are definitely trying, but not necessarily in unison. The bookstores and libraries are jammed to the gills with books on how to redo our budgets, redo our images, reinvent ourselves, reeducate ourselves, redo our makeup, and redo our bodies, minds and souls. We are told to pump ourselves up with motivational psycho babble, and downplay our life struggles by focusing on our Kodak moments of days long gone.
The bad economy has spawned an onslaught of professional advice. There is a veritable puppy mill of junior advisors out there spewing out tidbits on facebook and twitter. How to avoid foreclosure, reduce debt, save what little money we have left, and cut spending. We have had more advice crammed down our collective throats than there are websites on the internet. We are inundated with how-to’s from the experts. How to give the best interview, how to think up a new home based business, how to handle our children and home chores and work, and how to streamline our lives so as to make room for more problem solving time.
There are new collections of recipes on how to feed ourselves leftovers with a smile. There are stay-cations, day trips, and yoga classes at the YMCA. We are learning how to network with people at all hours of the day and night, and how to rehearse and deliver a one minute self sales pitch to strangers like “Hi, Im ________! I am great at basket weaving, the art of redecorating bathrooms, the use of digital media, and I have three degrees from Ivy League Schools.” We are learning to reprogram our brains with self talk on how we will survive on checking accounts that are dwindling down or empty. We are delving into innovative techniques in self hypnosis that refocus our minds on what we are grateful for, and how to get back to basics. Talk show hosts teach us how to brush with baking soda, or wash our hair with the cheapest non brand shampoo. We are using our high tech gadgets to run our businesses off a shoe string.
But despite this birth of creativity and ingenuity on ways to survive, we are not yet thinking as one. The flames of bipartisanship are burning down our cooperative effort, like the wick of a candle melting us away.
We don’t necessarily need to immediately figure out or hyper analyze why we are here. There is no stone unturned when it comes to the American style of investigation. We are all Sherlock Holmes, compelled to unravel each and every ugly ball of tangled financial failure. We must know, digest and regurgitate the reason for failure. We use the CNN approach to self examination: we pick, poke and prod. We examine from every possible angle until we exhaust ourselves emotionally and fall into an intellectual stupor. It is an economic who-done-it. Politicians seeking election or reelection are looking at "it" through a microscope. They point fingers. They try and help us diagnose our financial sickness from head to toe under bright lights. With surgical precision, we dissect and study, until we have gone over every inch of our national anatomy. Our representatives draft short catchy sound bites, so that the names and phone numbers of the real bad guys resonate in our sleep and may be recalled when we arrive at the polls.
Even if we eventually figure out the why, and even if we figure out who did it, we may not immediately agree on “the” answer. Not yet. There is no ten minute youtube video on how to gain back our equilibrium and fill our wallets back up with cash. We approach this like a lab experiment in quantum physics; it’s a quest for the Theory of Everything. We form congressional committees and subcommittees. Like a side show at the circus, we are forced to stand and listen quietly to another political sales pitch to purchase the virtual bottle of miracle medicine that will cure all of our aches and pains.
At Financial Ground Zero, we could aim for a unified purpose. Maybe, we could tap upon our own experience from social and political upheaval in our own lives. Our history may lead us. We survived the sixties, the civil rights days, the riots, the demonstrations, the assassinations, and the Vietnam War era. We emerged stronger from the mistakes of Nixon and Watergate. We demonstrated with peace signs and torn jeans draped over our bare feet. We collected our hatred and funneled it into new literature and rock n roll. We wept a river of tears over our sons and daughters, and mothers and fathers, killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then buried them with a sense of unified pride over their service to our country.
Here, down in the trenches, we could call a temporary ceasefire to the war on Capitol Hill. We could drown out the drone of creditors’ phone calls, bankers’ warnings, accountants’ mantras, politicians’ jingles and financial gurus' jargon with our stories. We may inspire each other to stay strong, and help each other to understand that we are not alone. We may share, support, commiserate, laugh, and cry together. In the churches, temples, at our schools, in the gym, in the grocery store, at the community center, in the coffee house, and at the board meeting, we can look for our similarities. In this place, we could restore our collective joy, and momentarily leave behind our separate individual sorrows.
Aiming for consensus does not mean that we lose our sense of self. We can do this without sacrificing our strong individuality as Americans. We can lift ourselves up as one, while still celebrating our differences.
Our enemies have been standing by greedily watching us suffer, feigning a helping hand, and waiting to prove that America will fall. They want to show that we are built upon a house of cards destined to crumble. We don’t have to let them. In years to come, our children will tell their children that, at the end of the day, we rediscovered the legendary unbroken spirit of America. With their children sitting attentively in their laps, or tucked in their beds at bedtime, our grown children will read the epilogue: During their parents’ lifetimes, there was a giant financial struggle, followed by a fragmentation of our nation. But, then, through our unique faith and trust in God and the American spirit, that was followed by the reuniting of America, which shined and flourished once more.
