Clearly, I was misinformed.

I grew up on stories of the Great Depression: was formed by my parents’ memories of sufferings endured or imagined. My great-grandfather… who’d weathered the Russo-Japanese War and had cannily utilized his war-record after the Kishiniev Pogroms to purchase property formerly proscribed to Jews— just so he could embed his young wife and 5 children in a profit-making grocery so that he could sneak across the Moldavian border to help his brother (who was to live and die in Miami) avoid the Czarist draft….. had himself mortally fallen from a broken heart on the steps of a failed bank, unable to pay his workers, at the beginning of the Great Depression:

And now this? A year in as stocks bounced from 13,000 to 7,000 and back again, with the bubble reflating: and that’s it? IT? OK…. 10% unemployment: but the restaurants are still serving and the wait-staff is still surly.

What am I missing?

I recognize that despite unemployment, I’m fortunate: this is clearly not THAT: unless we are deceiving ourselves: which is possible. I don’t think they (my parents, grandparents…) were: I’ve seen the Walker Percy photographs: it was real.

Sure, this is, too: I can’t get an extension on my home equity loan.

But against the anchorage point of the Great Depression, I am speechless. Pizza is still delivered. Cable service is unimpaired. OK: my car is a year or two older. But so what?

I recently read a rather compelling treatment about midlife: that the task is to construe oneself, through reflection and action, as the writer of one’s own life-narrative: if this is it, I’ve (WE HAVE!) been extraordinarily fortunate.

Even if the renovation of the apartment must wait.

Indeed: its not just Goldman Sachs that is profiting; but to look at the lot of us (yes, even factoring in the diminution of the 401-K), we’re in an incredibly good place.

If this is Depression, I’m confused.

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Spinning the Wheel Faster
• » Bridging Disciplines

• BROWSE / IN Emotion Loss Markets
• « Spinning the Wheel Faster
• » Bridging Disciplines

• RELATED / YOU MIGHT FIND THESE INTERESTING
• No related posts