Are You Prepared For the Great Depression?

Here it is--the day after the 4th of July and today I am contemplating the changes I have experienced and observed over the past 79 years. I was born during the year of the official beginning of the Great Depression of the last century. It just did not happen overnight and this is why I call it the official beginning. It lasted until WWII.  I read poster Dan H's question, "What Four Freedoms Do You Take For Granted?" My reply is life, freedom, work and creativity. In order to define my reply, I will share something about what it was like when I was growing up.

We were a poor family and we were subsidized by my mother and father's families. They shared what little they could. My mother's family were in Missouri and my father's in Dallas, Texas where I was born and where we lived for the first six years of my life. We had running water, lights and my mother had an old-fashioned wringer washing machine. She kept our house clean and our clothes. We were taught cleanliness, table manners, respect for our elders, not to lie, cheat or steal. We never locked our doors at night or when we were away. There was no television, DVD's, videos or computers.

Dallas was a safe place to walk the streets. I remember that at age 4 my sister, who was 5 years older than me would board a streetcar and with a lunch packed by my mother go downtown and play in the toyland of a major department store. There was never fear of being molested. At that time there was no public welfare although we heard that in the previous century there were places labeled 'poor houses' where poor people were sent to live. It was spoken in terms of degradation.

My father delivered blocks of ice to homes who had no refrigeration. He used large tongs to grip the block of ice and hoist it up on a leather shoulder blanket and carry it into the various homes. He hurt his back and was disabled for months. My mother did not work. Primarily, it was my father's older sister and her husband who subsidized us.

There were men out-of-work who road the rails in boxcars going from town to town looking for work. There were others we called tramps who would come to a house in the country and ask for food in exchange for labor. For the most part, the tramps were honorable.  There was no drug use and when someone got ill, the doctor would make house calls. I was born at home because my parents could not afford a hospital.

Times changed when WWII happened. I learned when I was in training to be a code clerk for the Foreign Service, U.S. State Department that a message had come into the code room ten days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor saying that the Japanese code had been broken and Pearl Harbor was scheduled to be bombed on December 7. My training supervisor told this story and she was the one who deciphered the message. She placed it in the out box and that was the end of her responsibility. Where the message ended up is anyone's guess and apparently someone wanted the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor. The rest is history.

WWII did not really end. It blended into the Korean War and the Korean War blended into the Vietnam War. By this time, the young men and women did not want to be drafted and sent off to a war that they knew was immoral. We had men fleeing to Canada and Europe to escape the draft.  By this time I was married to a career military man who spent two tours in Vietnam. It was an immoral war and I learned that the main purpose for the war was to protect the Golden Triangle - the area in Vietnam that raised the poppies for drugs. The war was about keeping the drugs from the VietCong. Thus, the introduction of drugs into this country.

The Sixties were a time of hope and we had the hippies. Women reportedly burned their bras as a sign of freedom. Where are they now? Disillusion set in when John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. With the assassinations and the introduction to drugs, the entire structure of the U.S. changed. We were given public welfare. We had Social Security and Medicare for the aged. Television was now in every home and the public was fed advertisements with subliminals to program people's minds. Movies became more blatant with sex, violence that was termed action. Sports became a big thing with the atheletes making more money than scientists who were producing ways to extend life. The population began getting sicker and sicker. In education there has been a dumbing down of students. I think you get the picture.

We are now in the beginnings of another Great Depression. What is it you take for granted? How are you going handle not having a job, a home, the money to buy food or medicine? How are you going to take care of your children? Do you have integrity? Are you honorable? Do you lie, cheat or steal? I answered the question posed as to what 4 things do I take for granted? I am now going to change the four things because I really do not take anything for granted.  I was actually thinking of other people.

Generally, life is taken for granted. Life is precious and a gift. No one should ever want to die. There is always a way. Freedom should never be taken for granted because it is up to us to create our own freedom and not depend on the govenment to take care of us. I am changing work to mind power. Our mind power is taken for granted and the majority of people have no idea of the power of their mind. It is from our mind that creativity comes forth.

Yes, things are going to get worse and this is the time when we can use our creativity and allow it to come forth. We do not have to buy into fear. Fear is a killer of dreams. We do not have to accept that it is hopeless. We can use our minds to come up with solutions. There is always a way. There is an ancient proverb: It is done unto you as you believe. The most profound solutions come in solitude or when doing mundane jobs such as washing dishes or even cleaning toilets. The solution to every problem is within us. To the Journey of Freedom.