I'm a worrier. When I tell this to friends, even those who know me well, the reaction I get 70% of the time is laughter. To me this is understandable, I come across as care free and laid back, and that is a large part of who I am. But I also worry, a lot. I think part of it is the oldest child in me and part of it is the obligation that I feel to take on the problems of the world. However, my history has shown that a lot of times my worrying is unjustified and an overreaction.
I remember when I was eight or nine I was babysitting and I called 911 because there was a car I didn't recognize in our driveway that had been sitting with the engine running and the lights on for about fifteen minutes. I hid with my siblings and kept my head poking up just enough to look out through the window. I stayed on the phone with the dispatcher who tried to keep me calm. I waited as the police pulled up behind the car and went to the window. When the door opened there was my mom, looking surprised, who was returning from dinner with a friend.
Then there was the time in sixth grade and the foothills behind our house were on fire. I panicked and started packing all the family albums and important documents (as well as my favorite new outfit I'd gotten that year for school that I hadn't been able to wear yet) in boxes and put them in our car. To me, we all needed to panic, but the atmosphere in my neighborhood felt more like we were having a block party and watching a fireworks show with everyone out, and families watching the fire from their roofs. It seemed to me that I was this little 6th grader jumping up and down and take everyone by their shoulder and say "can't you see how seriously this is?" Of course, another overreaction, the fireman took care of the fire and no one's house was ever seriously in danger.
Fast forward to 2009. The stock market goes below 7000 for the first time in over ten years, unemployment continues to rise, consumer confidence is plunging, and growth rates around the world are falling. On a personal level I have many close friends who are unemployed, and my family has suffered from the housing bubble and stock market drop. I am young, and even though I lost half of my 401K, I know that I have plenty of time to make up for it. It hurts me much more to think of my parents and grandparents, those who have much more invested and were much closer to retirement. I also know that there are millions living on fixed incomes and dependent on that money to pay their mortgage and for their prescription medicines who are in much worse shape than anyone I know personally.
I think that what worries me most is the fear that my children won't have the same quality of life that I have been blessed to have. My generation has lived in the most economically prosperous time in civilization, we don't know how to differentiate between needs and wants nor do we fully understand the sacrifices that we'll be forced to make. When you have an economy that depends on debt and beliefs in future appreciation in the stock market or housing values, eventually the bubble will burst.
However, despite all the bad news, I am hopeful. I have faith in God and His communication through a living prophet to guide and direct us. I have a family that loves and supports me to fall back on. My friends and I have half jokingly, half seriously, developed a "team apocalypse" and we regularly throw out hypothetical end of the world scenarios and discuss how we would respond. I purchased a emergency survival kit from costco and have been working on gardening and other "life skills" to help me survive if we return to an agrarian society. In six months, I could look back at this post and laugh that I was even worried that American was facing a permanent economic decline.
I honestly hope so, I do have a history of overreaction.
