We Were at Ease

i was driving the other day and i was hit with a really profound reality: "this is history." not my driving. the current economic situation. i am going to get old and tell my grandchildren how hard this time in our lives (our U.S.A. collective lives) was (is). i cannot get away from the message "it's all going to shit." it is in every commercial, news show, talk show, billboard and casual conversation. we are tanking, baby!!

spencer is in sales. this last month was really his first selling month outside of training and it has been hard. even those people who want to buy from him who have money are holding off because it looks bad. it will now become bad form to have money.

we have failed ourselves and we have failed as a democracy. you see, a democracy can only survive on the premise that its citizens are aware and informed. a huge part of our democratic fabric is the public domain and libraries. now, the PATRIOT ACT took some of that away. the other part, we just decided that people owed us information. we wanted to hear that an adjustable rate mortgage would save us on our monthly payments, and we chose to ignore that the long run would see us screwed. because we have forgotten how to seek information, to ask questions and to take personal responsibility.

we also forgot honor. we forgot to help inform our clients. we forgot that a handshake is a binding agreement. that contracts were an exchange between people who are our neighbors. maybe we didn't lie, but we didn't reveal the whole truth.

we forgot to see into the future.

what really sucks (not to be self righteous) is that many of us remembered and we are still being screwed.

as a nation, we became at ease. we became Job in our fortress. we only saw the world within our own walls and forgot about our neighbors outside. and now, well now, we owe and the devil has come to collect.

i guess it is only fair to be constantly reminded, so we don't forget...again.