I always thought I was retired until I lost a carload of assets and suddenly I was unemployed. And since I’d managed to live a pretty sybaritic lifestyle, resting on my laurels (and my bank account), it’s been a bit of a comeuppance to need to make money. If you’re visiting this blog, you may have joined the ranks of the unemployed,which wishful thinking, or Ben Bernanke, would have us believe is merely a temporary bump in the road. But what does it mean if it is more permanent? Does that mean we just panic and give up? Maybe, feels that way sometimes.
The convergence of work and my sense of value is pretty strong, at least that’s what our culture, and our country teaches us. Jews have prospered in America in part because the christian founding fathers, unbeknownst to them, formulated the basis of our values and economic system in way that invited centuries of ingenuity, created on the outside of cultures, to have a home right here in the U S of A.
The egalitarian ideal that, “all you have to do is try” that “everything is possible” broke the barriers of class, religion, & heritage. It’s true that few of those folks, bargained for what they got. White anglo saxon christians being equal was one thing, but African Americans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Jews etc, weren’t really in the cards. But we all saw the opening, & reached for the brass ring.
And now to suddenly have that yanked out from under you seems like a giant cultural rip off. If you can’t succeed financially, what’s left?
Here’s the question: “is it possible to be gainfully unemployed?” Let me know. Has anyone out there remade your life? Found any goodness in this new reality? Enjoyed the day?
