No, I don’t mean the the stock market will bounce back by Christmas, credit will return to the market as freely as before, or jobless numbers will turn the corner and head down. I’m not talking about the nation as a whole, I’m talking about you and me and what gives us worth. Our personal economy is strong and the position of the dollar or the size of the national debt cannot change that fact.
Our economy is strong because we have our priorities straight. Certainly we would like to go through life with no worries, but even in the best of times life seems to remind us that we do not write the future. We know that our families, friends, and faith are the gold standard of well being. You don’t have to be a Republican or a Democrat to understand.
What is wealth after all? For those who lose it and are devastated by that loss it is a crutch. For those who lose it and start over it is just a signpost on their journey. As I was growing up in a farming community in central Iowa I was surrounded by people who measured success by smiles and failure by frowns. My dad worried about money constantly yet smiled every day at almost everyone he met.
Abraham Maslow developed a theory that accurately describes many realities of personal experiences. He put forth that physiological needs, safety needs, needs of love, affection and belongingness, and needs for esteem form a hierarchy or ladder which must be climbed one rung at a time. You must pass the lower rung to move up to the next. The top rung on the Maslow’s hierarchy is the need for Self-Actualization. When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization activated. This he suggests is a person’s need to be and do that which the person was “born to do.” “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write.”
I didn’t realize until after he was dead that my father was a self-actualizing man. Through school and my early years of adulthood I had equated that with being financially well off. He once told me, “Son, we are Iowans. We may not always have new clothes or live in big houses but there will always be food on the table and a fire in the stove.” In his own way he was teaching me the fundamentals of personal economy. In his life he provided the foundations my siblings and I required to be our own persons. He loved my mom until he died. Through all of this and most importantly he always smiled.
These are the values I hope to pass on to my children. Your dad sounds like he was a great man.
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