Facing the Future by Spending Less
Times are tougher now for many families than they’ve been for more than half a century. A sense of anxiety seems to hang in the air about holding on to your jobs and making ends meet. Your family may even be dealing with unemployment or having trouble keeping up with the mortgage. Yet at the same time, there is also a sense of opportunity. Many families are re-examining their priorities and values as they focus on what truly matters to them. They’re also trying new ways of looking at the world, making the best of less, and finding ways to sustain a fundamental sense of optimism about the future. All these efforts are key elements of a resiliency you hope to foster in the future generation.
Calling all this a silver lining might be too much to as in times of job loss, foreclosures, and even hunger. But with so much of what you took for granted less certain, you have a chance to discover strengths you never knew you had and to rediscover the solid human values that have been with you all along.
Take community and connections, for instance. You now know that your own economic survival and wellbeing is interconnected with everybody else’s all over the globe. To pull yourselves out of this financial mess, you must pull together. Every day, young children struggle with the conflict between their selfish wishes and their need to nurture and care for others in order to feel good about themselves. For parents it can be tempting to encourage your children to look out for number one even at the expense of other children’s interests. Yet, this may be a time when you are all more likely to help your children see that little everyday sacrifices and compromises can strengthen your commitment to each other. You should encourage this sense of community now more than ever. This is for your own benefit and to be stronger in the years ahead.
Even when the bare necessities of life are no longer within reach, learning that others are ready to share what they have and that you can help even when you have less than before brings renewed strengths. When there is little else to count on, reassurance can still be drawn from these acts of human kindness and knowing that you are not alone.
Your economy may have boomed for so long on the basis of your purchasing power. You may have mistaken the pleasure your spending gave you for true meaning in your lives or a sense of who you truly are. But instant gratification today with no clear thinking about tomorrow is not a model that is likely to work for the younger ones in the future. Buying’s immediate gratification is hard to let go of, but in its place you can help them appreciate a different kind of satisfaction that comes from saving and strengthening yourselves. The people’s love affair with buying without even considering what it serves may soon be over. But that encourage you to find other activities that you can do.
Do you have requirements for syndication of your entries?I would be interested in translating a few of your articles into Russian for our sites viewers, and wondered what your stance on this would be. We will be sure to add a link back to your site.