I have found myself on many occasions recently trying to convince people that the sky is in fact not falling. The economy does suck, despite what Republicans want to believe. The election process makes me miserable. At work we are desperately trying to climb out of a vast valley. But despite it all, I do believe the sky is not in fact falling. Here’s why:
Not to trivialize the consequences for the many people who have lost their jobs this week, but companies do come and go. So it goes. Stock markets crash and recover. So it goes. People lose their jobs and then pick themselves up again. Many move on to bigger and better things. Some learn valuable lessons and become better people for it. Again, so it goes.
As for the election, it looks as if the same old tactics are working. Instead of having a debate about how to solve problems, we are engaged in a culture war that has little to do with politics, government or the philosophical foundation that has gotten this country to where it is. It would be easy to say that people these days don’t care enough. Or aren’t educated enough. Or aren’t smart enough. But I don’t believe any of these things are true. People are simply being people, which means we are reacting emotionally, we ignore reason, we overly generalize (look at what I am doing right now) and worst of all we stay in our comfort zones and avoid the hard problems.
But this too is all okay. Because at the end of the day, there will be a new president. There will still be 100 senators and 435 representatives and 9 justices to help correct things along with the one guy we elect in November. Hopefully, a few of those 545 people will look at the last 8 years and decided it’s not good enough and be inspired to do better and have the courage to inspire those around them to do better.
Life is full of tough times. The sky is not falling. We simply have crashed (on many fronts) and have not yet picked ourselves up again. But we will. We always do. So it goes.