What If?

The economic crisis in the last couple of weeks has been rather eye-opening for me, as for most of you, I'm sure. The details are way over my head, so I've been relying on the explanations of people smarter than me to get as much info as I can. Some of them say that things will improve soon and we'll all be okay. Others' viewpoints are much more doom and gloom. I'm not intelligent enough on the subject to be able to make my own predictions. However, I do think that even if the doom-and-gloomers end up being correct, it may be a good thing.

Let's say, for example, that it gets so bad that we fall into another economic depression. The idea of that kind of excites me, to be honest. Crazy, I know. But I think it might be the wake-up call that our culture needs.

We have become so used to living in excess, so accustomed to ditching what we already have in favor of something bigger and better. This especially applies to material possessions but also to personal relationships as well. Spouses have extramarital affairs, young adults move far from home in search of "freedom," friendships are severed at the slightest argument...

But what happens when all of that bigger-and-better excess goes away? All we're left with is our personal relationships. And I'm willing to bet that at that point, we will handle our only valuable possessions—our loved ones—with the utmost care. We Americans just might learn how to treat each other again.

Imagine if you and everyone you love had to live in the same house, working together and combining your resources, in order to survive. This sounds fun to me. It sounds enriching and inspiring. It's the way things should be anyway, but we've fallen away from it. And while I honestly do hope that a depression never ever occurs, I'm just saying that if it does, we might experience love in a way that we never have before.

And I'll take that over a pimped-out retirement any day.