If you read that title and immediately thought of the flying lizards, I commend you. Because that's what I was going for.
I want to talk about money. I want to talk about how I don't have any and how I want some and how I'm ashamed of myself to a certain extent for that and how I feel a little bit duped right now. I wanna talk about how I'm not the only one who feels this way.
For instance, the other night, a friend of mine from seminary and I were talking on the phone. In terms of money spent, our educational backgrounds are similar. We both attended private colleges and both went to seminary afterwards. And now we're reaping the benefits of that, right? Wrong-o! Now, loan companies are reaping the benefits of the fact that there is NO MARKET for post seminarians besides going onto a PhD or going into pastoral ministry or counseling. We're both gonna be paying these loans until we lie, stinking in the earth. That's fine with me, I guess. I figured I'd have debt for my entire life and that's something that I've slowly learned to accept. What I'm not fine with is that I didn't really know the financial facts going into all of this.
First of all, we're (and by "we," I mean middle class students in the United States) made to believe that having a degree is a good and useful thing. It is when the economy is good, but when the economy is looking like Germany right around the time when people were using deutschmarks as wallpaper, it's not quite so useful. Knowing a trade is useful. Because there's a market for it.
I'm pretty sure that there isn't a job market for 20 somethings with BA's in religion and MA's in Theological Studies and no experience doing anything. I'm not sure what I thought would happen, but I'm pretty sure I thought that any kind of a Master's Degree would at least ensure that I wasn't going to be living well UNDER the poverty level. That's weird, isn't it?
On the other hand, I've learned how much I don't need to survive and function, which has been a good thing. It'll allow me to be more frugal if ever I happen to have the opportunity to make enough money to actually decide what to do with the extra money I make.
I've been working my little ass off in Maryland, here. Two jobs. The usual. Then, poof, one of the jobs couldn't afford me anymore. They felt really bad about it, but I had to go. That's fine. It messes up my plans for the whole rest of the year, but only by pushing forward the inevitable move back to Cleveland. Probably a blessing in disguise, because I can be around my family and almost everyone else in the world who is important to me.
I'm so thankful that I have such a supportive social network somewhere in the world and I'm so thankful to be able to really know that I'm not going to end up on the streets because of this shitbag economy (thanks again, W), again because of that social network of people who care about me and who I care about.
Some people aren't as lucky as I am, though. I wonder what's going to happen to them as we lose more jobs. I wonder what's going to happen to us as more and more qualified and eager workers can't find work because there simply isn't any to be found? I wonder what's going to happen to families with children to feed. To people who don't have the familial resources needed in times like these.
I have to hope that we'll be able to pull ourselves out of this awfulness as a country. As a collective of human souls who have each other's best interests at heart.
I hope we're going to be willing to take a cut in hours or forego a raise so that we can ALL keep our jobs. Not just some of us. Not just the lucky ones. ALL of us. A-L-L.
Think about that in the upcoming years. What are you doing to take care of your fellow human beings? What are you doing to usher in a time of concern for each other. Of common human decency?
Even though it might seem like it, now is not the best time to have an "every-man-for-himself" mentality. That's the kind of thing that kills us.
The empowering potential of the human spirit, I might argue, is the very BEST thing in life.
And while they've already got us on water, air, food and sometimes even sunlight, I haven't seen anyone trying to charge for creative and empowering use of the human spirit.
The best things in life are still free.
Let's use them!
