Since the bottom dropped out of the financial security my husband and I worked our whole lives to achieve, I have had to go deep inside to look at a lot of stuff I haven’t wanted to see. Compassion toward everyone has been a biggie.
Since 2000 I’ve been saying privately that the U.S. economy was heading for deep do-do. To me, the first warning sign was the low-yield interest rates for savings that Greenspan kept adjusting downward. I’m not an economist. I can’t count that high. Neither am I clever enough to fudge figures until they agree with my assessment.
Of course, with the exception of a friend who was an economist, everyone thought I was nuts. Then I watched as home prices and rents went through the roof, not just in the U.S. but everywhere I’ve lived in the world. I also watched everyone around me buying whatever they wanted simply because they wanted it therefore talked themselves into needing it.
As the national debt soared, I began to quietly ask “If our government is spending more than it’s raking in, and consumers are doing the same, how can the bottom not drop out of the economy?” It seemed pretty clear to me that everyone had to stop living beyond their means, pay off their debt and look at why things are so important to them.
What I didn’t factor in is the other side of the mess: there are people around the world who will do anything to take what isn’t theirs. They’re the ones, like our landlord in Mumbai who made it his trademark to not pay the poorest of the poor for months of work. I had compassion lapses for them until they began to pretend to fix things and to steal from me to make up for not being paid when they did do good work.
I have had trouble feeling compassion for the idiots who bought properties they couldn’t afford and didn’t read the fine print on their loan documents. Ignorance is not a viable defense for greed fostered by the stupidity of thinking about what we want, rather than what we can afford.
The actions of the Madoff’s of the world is beyond comprehension, but a level of responsibility belongs to their clients who were making returns on their investments they knew were beyond economic reality.
So maybe it all comes down to greed and a worldwide sense of entitlement to grab the sticky brass ring, no matter what the consequences to our spirits and ethics.
Maybe this whole mess is about being faced with the need to look ourselves in the mirrors and to see how we have contributed to it either as passive or proactive participants. It all boils down to accepting responsibility for everything we create and for failing to care as much about each other and doing the right thing as we do about “things.”
Our world is a place where those who are rich or comfortable look at those of a different caste, class, race, or nationality as being obviously undeserving of what they have achieved. Worldwide, the middle and upper classes are suffering terribly. Their idea of what their life would be has begun to be replaced with “what is.” And the poorest of the poor, they’re not even surviving and even fewer care if they do.
I’m working on expanding my compassion quotient to include the thieves, the stupid and the greedy. We’re human beings and the most important message the world may have ever received from this mess is that we all make mistakes, we all make choices and we can change if we want to. Perhaps the place to begin is to care about and help each other.
Challenges are always opportunities. We’ve got them and the best opportunities may be found outside ourselves within our own communities.
If we step outside our personal pity parties and “me first” mentalities, there are a million ways we can help someone less fortunate than we are financially or morally. Maybe it begins with compassion.
Copyright 2009 by Jeanne M. Eck. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint or to quote extensively from this article, please contact the author at iamhappiertoknowyou.com