Be the Rock

For weeks and months, whenever I turn on the TV or listen to the radio, I get GLOOM and DOOM from the news media and the political hacks on the opposing party. Rush Limbaugh actually wants Obama to fail so that the Republican Conservative Right can say…See we told you so! What we are experiencing is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you create enough gloom and doom and fear that everyone starts to BELIEVE, then everyone starts pulling in, buying less and holding off on bigger purchases. They don’t go out as much and they don’t give as much. We become like turtles pulling in our arms and legs and heads into our shells just as a truck comes barreling down the highway headed right for us. Instead of moving forward, we stop, we pull inside and go into survival mode.

Even if we want to spend money, buy a house or purchase a new car, the banks are not lending. They are taking the government money, but they are holding on to it, making the credit crisis even worse. Why should they continue to make loans when more and more people cannot repay their existing loans or their mortgages because they are losing their jobs, because people are not spending and companies are going under? What a vicious cycle, what a wicked merry-go-round we find ourselves on these days. Where is our knight in shining armor? Where is Superman when we need him?

Did you ever stop to think that just maybe…it starts with us, with how we THINK? If we lose our hope, how can we make others feel hopeful? We can be like Rush Limbaugh and all the nay-sayers and help spread the fear and the panic or we can hold on to our hope and trust that things are beginning to get better. We can look for the glimmers of good news or be consumed by gloom and doom. We create our own reality. If this economic crisis teaches us nothing else, it should prove to us once and for all that we are all connected and what we think and what we fear does make a difference. The only way to stop a string of dominoes that begins to fall is to step out of line and refuse to fall.

Have faith, my fellow Americans. Have faith. We will come through this and we will learn from this crisis. Don’t be the domino…be the rock.

FOOD for THOUGHT...