The reframing of problem as opportunity is the mantra of the current economic climate (CEC). And from within our chanting, whether through gritted teeth or genuine optimism, we have the choice of passivity or activity.

Passively, we may be mesmerized by our decrements: in spending power, in the small luxuries we’d become accustomed to, and in the meaningfulness of our daily endeavors— shaped as they have been according to the beneficence of the bubbles we embraced with high enthusiasm. Linked to our amazement is our sense of disappointment and loss.

Passively, we take in the daily news, cresting in waves around the world: business failures, plans for “good” banks and “bad” banks, downgrading of formerly vibrant nations’ credit ratings. As if by staring at all this long enough, we will come to some understanding, some comprehension of scope and dimension. Incredulous, we become fixated, attempting to wrap our understanding around something so enormous.

Actively, on the other hand, we might focus on the short term with an eye to the future. We might hedge our bets, lessen our exposures. We might choose the Long-Term parking lot at the airport rather than the regular lot both because we now have the time and because it is half the price. We can afford to reflect, without the mad press of having to react immediately. And because we reflect, we may have for the first time, reached a place where we can appreciate value. Value not in the business sense of profit, however gained and at whatever cost, but value in a human sense of worthiness, both quantitative and qualitative: as in the value range of a painting’s colors.

Taking the breath granted us after the recent shocks in our respective lives, we may have the opportunity to engage ourselves in the question of worth. Interestingly enough, the psychological literature reflects that increasing amounts of wealth do not make people happy. And in talking with many of you over the last months, its evident that, despite current disappointment and loss, only a very few had believed genuinely, before the Fall (of Lehman?), that their lives were simply “good”. More often, it seems, our disappointments followed the incremental development of economically driven appointments, understood as givens—- as entitlements socially bestowed according to our various fields of work; but erroneously believed to reflect one’s core, one’s worth.

We now have the time to engage our capabilities for reflection. Actively, we must differentiate between the values we hold worthy within our unquestioned belief in “value”, before we again pursue that ROI which leaves us personally emptied, disillusioned, and unhappy.

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