‘Tis the Season

I have been keeping both eyes open. There is so much going on in the world and in my life. I look at how our financial systems have bottomed out and wonder what the end product of all of this will be. Will it affect the diversity of the cars on the market? Will my 403 bounce back before I retire? Will I ever pay off my credit cards? How will this affect the way I live my life for the foreseeable future?


Is it the greed of a few that has finally come home to roost? Or is it just egg on their face for a while? There’s this part of me that thinks we should let them pay for their mistakes in business, just like the local store merchant does when he makes bad financial decisions. The sad thing is that it affects not only the hot shot chairman and board members; it affects every one of us to some degree.


Change comes in many ways. The world rotates and hurricanes crash through our man made world and shrieking winds laugh at what they cause to tumble. Can you imagine the first guy that saw the aftermath of a natural disaster and said…”That won’t happen again for fifty years, maybe I can make a buck insuring people against that happening in my life time.” You know, there is a person somewhere that can determine your worth. They can sit at a computer and using some mathematical program they can tell you how much money your life is worth.


So the question is what am I worth? At my day job, I am at the top of my pay scale. I could probably move to a larger city and make more money, or would the cost of living eat up the pay increase? I could live more frugally, but what would my life be worth to me then? I was raised in a society that said you start school at age five, and for twelve years you study to learn how to function and work to support ourselves. Then we spend our adult life working, hoping and praying that you find a job you like and loved ones along the way. Near the end of our lives we are allowed to retire, at which time we can do what ever we can afford, based on how well we saved our money along the way.


I write romance novels, do I rank higher on worth, or automatically get points taken off for distracting the working public with fiction? Are the stories that I write about the journeys people take because they didn’t have a job with retirement funds. How many of the world’s population live vicariously through books?


It’s a strange world that we live in, when several major companies collapse and every person in our country will feel its affects. (Okay, I know I’m rambling) I would rather have given the money to the car makers and taken it away from the banks. You have companies charging what were considered Loan Shark rates in the forties and fifties getting bailed out. The heart of matter is that these companies became greedy. And we as their customers allowed ourselves to be lured into the, “I want” mentality. Paying later, when I might have more money seems like a good idea when I want it now. They were the pied piper and we rushed to follow. They should fall over the cliff. At least that way all of us pay for the mistake.


I believe that our worth is in our own eyes. There are very few of us who define ourselves by how much money we make or have. If people must define themselves that way, I suspect it is a life empty of self worth. Don’t get me wrong, I want to live comfortable with money to do the extra things, but I don’t use money labels in deciding my worth.


Rhianna