This morning as I do most mornings, I fired up the laptop to read the local newspaper online and check my favorite blogs while sipping my morning joe. While sipping a lovely cup of Sumatra, I ran across this story and this one, in the first story it seems a fellow was so distraught over losing his job that he decided life had no meaning, yet rather than just end his own life, he apparently decided he didn’t want to be alone in death and decided to make it a family affair. Generally they call that murder-suicide in polite society.
In the second story which is Maine based, a woman who at one point had been an upstanding member of society engaged in good works as director of a group home, decided to take a walk on the dark side. It seems that since leaving her a job a couple years ago, she decided that prostitution seemed like a great way to earn some cash. Turns out she was wrong.
Now as I was sipping the coffee and processing both these stories, I started thinking that the common link between both these folks was cash or rather a lack of cash. On the surface neither shared much in common but in these increasing hard times, I suspect we will see more folks who were average joes resorting to doing some dark shit to cope with the changing economic tides.
The past decade has seen such a rapid level of growth and greed and so many have bought into the lie that they must have XY and Z to be successful, folks no longer feel okay just having a functional car, it must be a nice car. Simple shelter and simple meals are also no longer acceptable, one must have a 3000 sq ft house decorated with the latest Pottery Barn or whatever is hot in home fashions. A simple meal of beans and rice shared with loved ones is not enough, instead we must be able to eat out.
Yet the reality is even in these tough economic times, even the brokest American is still living larger than someone in a third world country…most of what we consider necessities are in fact luxuries. If you are reading this, it means you either own and have access to a computer, most of us have heating and cooling systems, some form of food….do you get my point? Even at the food pantry I went to on behalf of my job, I was struck with how nice the food was, granted I know pantries can vary greatly. But the pantry was giving out organic fruits and veggies!!!! Organic and none of what I brought to the kids was expired or inedible, I would eat it myself or feed it to my own family.
The point is that maybe for some of we can use this as a time to get back to basics and as Suze Orman the financial guru says people first….lets focus on what we have and not on what we lost.
As my Pops used to preach when he was active in the minstry, when was the last time you saw a U-haul truck behind a hearst? Seriously, we enter this joint naked and we leave it naked, all that shit we kill ourselves trying to obtain is meaningless in a larger picture. Killing ourselves and whoring ourselves because we lack……really its not that serious.
