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Saturday, January 10 A Time for Taking Inventory
I made the mistake of watching CNN last night before I fell asleep This is not a good way to get a good night’s sleep Or rather DUH!
So I woke up at 6am, a few hours before I had to or wanted to feeling all stressed out. I sat with all the fear most of which I realized was exaggerated or irrational I sat with the question, “what is really going on in my blonde head?” Here’s what I came up with
I know what it feels like to not be able to pay my gas bill and live without heat, under a pile of blankets. I know what it feels like to live in a dangerous hood and not be able to afford a phone. I know all this, I lived all this, climbed out and up, way up. I feel pride that I survived. I feel more pride that I have not let the journey turn me dark. This is not the rossi tooting her own horn column, this is the rossi saying I know what it feel likes to be poor. When I give to the home less I say inside my head, “there but for the grace of god,” Of course those years are decades ago and my life now is warm and comfy and privileged. I know this and I’m grateful, or rather when I’m reminded by things like watching the news, I remember to feel grateful.
What’s happening now is a reckoning. Its corporations left unguarded for far too long, filled with people who may very well walk past the home-less and sniff from snobbery, now holding out a huge cup and asking for billions. “Spare change?” they beg the government. It is automotive industries filled with CEO’s many of which have not given a rat’s ass about changing their vehicles to save our planet and changing their oil needs to save our country, now holding out their hats and begging our country, “Please sir, spare some billions!” and we have to cave in, not for the CEO’s but for the millions of people who will be affected if the automotive industry fails, not the least of which is us. I recall growing up my parents were what you call “Depression Babies.” No matter how much money they made, they never got over worrying about food in their formative years. My mom could make a dollar stretch like nobody could. It never occurred to me that I might live to see another depression. Like many of you I was affected by the recession but quite honestly after my pasta casserole years, it was like a day in Disney land. This certainly feels worse. So I believe the media when they start to throw around the word depression, not recession. I don’t think it’s possible that it could anything remotely close to the great depression but it certainly is a time when people all around me are feeling desperate. Desperate people do desperate things and that’s scary. I did finally fall back asleep. It was a deep magical, warm safe sleep nestled in my heated apartment with the warm downy blankets and my purring cat. I woke feeling enlightened and if you would indulge me a bit I’d like to pass on to you what I have come up with. Much like the way Jews take inventory on Yom Kippur, evaluating what we have done wrong and what we have done right and what we want to change in the new year, this is a time to take inventory, not just of our wallets but of ourselves. I believe that if all of us, with a bit of extra coin, will right now do something generous for a person in need and if all those in need will find the courage to ask for help if they have not, and accept it if its offered, we can right now start to change the world.
You know what? While I was walking around giving out all that money, I was not blowing cash on meaningless things like I might normally have been. All in all I might very well have come out ahead. I think I am going to stop watching the news for a while and just start listening to my heart. I have three bags of change left and I plan on giving them out today. Happy New Year to you. Like everything else, I promise
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