How To Be Happy In A Recession
Dec 1st, 2008 at 9:57 am by Susie
To be happy in a recession means, first and foremost, resisting all the threats that fear possesses. Don’t obsess anxiously over what you could lose. Don’t reduce your world to a bank account or a 401k. Isn’t there an upside to losing some “consumer buying power”? To be honest, we went too far with consumerist mania. By any measure this is an inordinately rich country, and instead of mourning sagging profit margins, can’t we use the current slowdown to ask what makes for true personal happiness?
Relationship. Gratitude. Appreciation. Compassion. Mutual regard. Strong social connections. Love you can trust.
I don’t know why it takes a crisis to bring out those fundamental human qualities. But it often does. We all realize that the next video game, the next new car, the next flat-screen TV means nothing compared to the rewards of relating to other people. Yet we live as if the opposite is true. The pursuit of happiness is blocked just as much by indulgent over-consumption as by an economic downturn. More, in fact. An impoverished country like Nigeria recently scored number one in a survey of the happiest countries on earth, while the U.S. has never broken the top ten in any such survey.
Some may protest that expanding and becoming more human is all well and good if you have a job but totally unrealistic if your livelihood is threatened. I don’t think so. Whatever happens, the worst-off will be the ones who need more compassion, kindness, and relating to. They will need real coping skills, not a show of group pity.
There’s a lot more to say about how to be happy in a recession, but the main thing is to remind yourself that it’s possible. Refuse to contract just because the economy does. You have the tools to be happy in the worst of times. They’re just hidden under the box your new iPhone came in.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200812011158.html
Excuse me?
I think we were officially in a recession right about the time that people started wearing clothes made from their pets’ fur: http://tinyurl.com/59sfnn
Easier said than done. Much easier.
I go with drugs and alcohol. always helps.
Look, we are over-consumers and spoiled children in oh so many ways. Regardless, this sort of “smile while you go broke” nonsense has no place in any meaningful discussion of our present economic crises.
And I know whereof I speak. I recently completed a MD to WA and back again trip moving my youngest son - and his car died a complete and irrevocable death on the way out there. I’ll go to my grave ashamed of the way I handled it - badly - even though I am presently undergoing serious financial problems and really, really didn’t need the added expense of a rental car. Yet I know that compared to 95% of the worlds population…….
But people are losing their pensions, health insurance, jobs and security, so let’s stop acting as though all we need do is smile our way through. I might point out Michelle Malkin wrote the same damn tripe just last week – she found a couple that was just pleased as punch to have had tragedy strike them. Well good for them (and I mean that sincerely – if they can become better people for it that’s nothing but good.) What isn’t good is the expectation that the rest of us chose to see things that way. I don’t. I’m outraged by the political, economic, and cultural decisions that made this crash inevitable and believe those responsible need to be held accountable.
So please forgive me if I don’t say a prayer of thanks to some invisible friend in the sky and instead demand justice from those who caused this mess.
…although brendancalling @ 3 has some damn good advice…
What brendancalling said. Also, if you’ve still got electricity, internet access, and one of those Mp3 gadgets, you can download and listen to some great popular music from the 1930’s. I’m revisiting everybody from Woody Guthrie to Bing Crosby to Duke Ellington and it’s fun.
My parents listened to this stuff in high school, 1930’s, and never got over it.
Who said it? “Been down so long, it looks like up to me?”
BDSLILLUTM was the title of Richard Farina’s first (and only) novel.
Why should we now start paying attention to an complete idiot such as Deepak Chopra?
Deep Crap.
i have been revolted by our consumer culture for years. it made me seek living in another country even more than bush did. i haven’t bought very much for a long time but my responsible ways have paid off not at all. since i am unable to work due to disability and live off a small dwindling trust that i have no control over, i’m as screwed as anyone who didn’t exercise control over their spending. the money’s all in the stock market, and i’m scared to even look at how much it lost. i’m pretty much in the same position as retirees seeing their nest eggs evaporate, except that i have i need it to last alot more years. hard not to worry about the future. what does that multimillionaire have for those of us without the shopping sickness? his words are as worthless as the the bailout.
What he says here is correct. But it’s also not complete.
Combine what he says with insisting that the crooks/criminals who got us into this economic mess be the ones who pay for it.
Then he’d have the full picture.