"The little reed, bending to the force of the wind soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over." - Aesop
Batten down the hatches. Those of us who have lived long enough in America know all too well that going through a recessionary storm is nothing new. We’ve been there before and more than likely, we will cycle out of it again in due time.
Still, knowing that this too shall pass, doesn’t make it any easier if you are jobless and/or about to lose your home. This season will try men’s soul particularly among the hundreds of thousands out pounding their keyboards and hitting the pavement looking for a job. Many counted on their big companies, dedicating a great chunk of their lives thinking of them as solid rock which can be depended upon during the retirement years only to see them folding up like a house of cards. It doesn’t make it any easier if your house is in foreclosure, your rent is way past due or that you are up to your eyeballs in debt.
The question is, how soon will relief come. Still, with or without the reassuring advantage of experience and hindsight, the period we are all facing brings with it certain dangers that have had no precedent, and it would be foolhardy to predict easy solutions and an effortless way out of the morbid mess we’re in. Many see the stimulus package of billions of dollars as mortgaging our future, as well as that of our children. I have a niggling fear it is a jumbo-sized band-aid, only a temporary palliative, and not a real cure for a genuine ailment. There is something pervasive, both in the structure and spirit of the American model that seems badly broken and needs not only mending but a major structural overhaul and a passionate resurgence of that uniquely American spirit that came to the fore many times in its more than two centuries of existence.
During the storm of the early 1990s, we didn’t have two foreign wars that drained us in human capital and national psyche, not to mention the billions of dollars being spent. We didn’t have the severe magnitude of the real estate crisis in foreclosures that we have, with millions of Americans rendered practically homeless and languishing in financial limbo duped by the unrelenting greed of the mortgage and finance industry and the unconscionable ineptitude of government to regulate and exercise control. Nor did we have the serious energy crisis that is driving the whole world to distraction coupled with the threat of global warming and a planetary balance that’s out of kilter, e.g hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, heat waves. No place on earth is exempt. The most that economists can tell us is that this global storm is going to be a long and deep one. Let’s hope they are wrong.
That stubborn survival streak genetically encoded in the innards of millions of ordinary people who live and thrive on daily doses of faith pray that all such predictions are off the mark. We still hope that despite all appearances and flying in the face of all reason, we can head off or be spared of the effects of an ebbing economy. What has become clear is that bigger is not necessarily better and that in the end, you have to depend on yourself for your own survival.
Take a page from the Filipino’s resiliency in weathering anything that fate throws at him. He’s like the proverbial reed bending with the wind. There’s simple acceptance, equanimity and a firm resolve to deal with whatever comes as long as the family’s welfare is taken care of, forging ahead, all predictions of doom and gloom swept aside.
One thing I learned from my father who was a ship captain for 40 years is that you have to heed the storm warnings, smell the wind with a nose that knows, and with keen eyes, study the shoals, reefs, drifts and the waves and the clouds, and to never underestimate or second- guess Mother Nature’s tempestuous fits, to duck and take cover in a cove on the safe side of an island out of harm’s way, stack up on basic provisions, batten down the hatches, pray and wait out the storm until it’s all over.
With or without experience in how to deal with these changes, we all need to learn how to batten down the hatches and weather these troubling times. The deep anxieties that lurk about and hover in our souls scare us half to death. And yet to dwell on and validate such fears only corrodes courage.
Feel the fear if you must, but do grapple with it and nuke it. Astute Dorothy Bernard aptly said: "Courage is fear that has said its prayers."
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( Published on February 18, 2009 in Asian Journal Los Angeles p. B2 )
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