>I couldn’t help wondering why I was so taken with the CNN photo image of Lehman Bros. headquarters on Wall Street this past week as the news broke of its pending bankruptcy following failed efforts to have it rescued by third parties. Then it hit me. It was almost seven years later, to the day, that the Lehman skyscraper image, with words of its pending financial collapse printed below, appeared on CNN…seven years to the day after 9/11.

What I was so taken with was the irony, no, not the irony but the connectivity, between the financial buildings on Wall Street that literally came tumbling down seven years ago and the ones now figuratively tumbling down… both before our very eyes.

I think one was a precursor of the other. It’s time we paid attention to the message, don’t you think?

I have listened in the past few days to Alan Greenspan and Suzy Ormond, the former being the “official” financial guru and the latter being the “populist” version, and I think they’re both wrong. Well, not wrong, just misguided. Remember when during the 1992 Presidential campaign Bil Clinton said, “It’s the economy, stupid”? Well, it’s sort of the economy now only not the way Clinton meant it. Back then he meant that George H.W. Bush was out of touch with the challenges faced by most Americans because Bush was a blue-blood elitist. 

Now, it’s about how we’ve prayed too long at the altar of money and material acquisitions…so much so…that we went too far astray from the meaning of Life and what loving Life, and one another, truly means. So, as with all things out of balance, our condition has required a “course correction.” 

The happenings in the financial market are a symptom…they are not the dis-ease.

We all feel it. Not just monetarily. We feel it in the stress we live with every day trying to keep pace with a reality controlled by the pace of technology. We feel it in the loss of meaningful relationships or even the time to cultivate them. We feel it in the frustrations we encounter trying to get adequate health care or even just a live person, rather than voice mail, to assist us in getting adequate health care. We feel it in the pressure of raising kids in a world where everything is so impersonal and where cheap, meaningless sex is so readily marketed in every medium.

Despite Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, it’s not about Change. Its about adaptation to change. We don’t need change. We already have it. We’re in it. Take a look around. Nothing is working like it used to. And that’s not a bad thing, either. It’s a good thing. Because things stopped “working” for us a while ago. We’ve been working for them. That change happened slowly over time…so slowly we missed the switchover. Only now are we waking up to the reality of where we find ourselves.

What we do about it is All That Matters.

In less than 60 days a new President of The United States will be elected and he (yes, it’s still a “he”) will take the oath of office a few months later.  As part of that oath he will swear to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.  In so doing, might I suggest our next President spend less time bailing out the financial sector and trying to shore up a broken, misguided system of governmental corruption and more time inspiring this nation in what a call to greatness looks and feels like. This is the highest service he could perform for his nation at this time. To point the way out of darkness and towards the Light.  Inspiration is food for the Soul. This is what we truly hunger for…not a DOW over 13,000.

We, the United States of America, remain an experimental beacon of individual freedom, creativity and ingenuity. We have survived infancy, childhood and our teenage years. Will we now accept the personal responsibility of adulthood, seizing the moment to become the best we can be… or will we stay stuck in those rebellious teenage years where, if we cannot have it our way, we’ll just “throw a fit” and dig in our heels…until the rest of the world grows up and passes us by?

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

Comments are closed.