There is a very old joke which says “a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours”. This plays to the widely accepted contemporary belief that a depression is simply a particularly severe recession.
Opportunities are everywhere. The recession might be drawing to a close, but its continuing legacy is employers' reliance on short-term staff. There may be fewer jobs for life, but there are more jobs in a lifetime.”
United States and the rest of the world is in midst of a frightening recession and financial meltdown. Individuals are rightfully concerned about their survival, well being and taking care of their loved ones. It seems that there is no way out. We are borrowing trillions of dollars from our grandchildren to finance our thoughtless gambling debts of excess, greed and carelessness. This is tons of negative karma! The problem was caused by our collective greed and the resolution of this crisis will mostly take a global effort, international cooperation and a national strategy. While this is largely accurate, I feel that individuals can take a few steps to master this catastrophic meltdown.
In our country, like we celebrate Diwali similarly in midst of it if we do similar preparations for this dark night of hardship and uncertainty in our world, if each one of us lights the candle of our soul; of our
Consciousness, we can light up the dark night of the present situation.
Money has no inherent value other than being a mechanism for exchange of goods, services that we need or desire. It gives us access to what we value. The first gift of recession is to reevaluate what is truly of value in our life. Do we value a flashy car, being a big house or quality time with our family? It does not cost any money to spend time with our loved ones. As a matter of fact, the lesser the material distractions, the greater the window of time we have to spend with our loved ones.. We can choose whether we live to work or work to live a quality life, emotionally connected to our loved ones.
Once we have done some sorting out of our priorities, we have the task of separating wheat from chaff and let go of the redundant life goals, extravagant needs and refocus on what really matters to us. This calls for sacrifice. We may have to sacrifice a big house for a smaller one, a new car for a used one, a vacation in the sun to a local vacation in our home town. So the second gift of recession is the capacity to make a Sacrifice of material goals in deference to emotional and Spiritual priorities.
It is truly said that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Even with 8 to 10 percent unemployment there are 90 percent of us employed. This recession is an opportunity for Altruism. If each one of us who are fortunate to have a secure employment could reach out to at least one other person who is unemployed or in financial and personal crisis, we can make a difference. Of all things we can do in recession, the biggest is the capacity to Say NO to yourself in terms of what you Want in favor of what you Need. If in the process you save some time or money, donate this to someone in need, whether it is your time, money, talent or resources. Saying Yes to others and saying NO to you is one of the highest attributes of an evolved soul.
In psychological terms, the recession is an opportunity for each one of us does some soul searching, for sorting out our priorities, to make necessary sacrifices, to move from Wants to Needs, from greed to
Altruism, for learning to say No to ourselves, to reach out to our fellow human beings, to move from a material corporate society to a spiritually informed society, from a lopsided life to a balanced life.
In this dark night of the Soul of our society, let us light a candle of compassion, courage and collaboration with each. Divided - we will be merely rearranging the chairs on the deck of titanic. Together we can overcome this crisis and prevail to become a fair, just and a revitalized society.
In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, or by increasing production, or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible, by striving constantly to achieve a state of immobility.