You’ve heard the term “too big to fail”…well, I’d like to suggest we might be getting too big to care.
About a year or so ago, my husband, Al, and I swore off watching the news, cable news, the newspapers, etc. because everything we saw, heard, read was negative. Well, that lasted about 12 hours…then, the TV goes back on, the paper gets delivered and we don’t have the strength not read or listen. But, I think it was more than just not enough willpower to stay away from the stuff…because it might change our mood…I think it was because we did care…we just became frustrated over the fact that we “felt” we couldn’t do anything, we couldn’t change the negative news, we had no control over most of it. We really thought the world had become too big for us to make a difference.
At least that’s what we thought. But, I’ve been reflecting on this thought. Growing up in the 50′s in a small town in Illinois…very small town…didn’t even have a stop light, people really cared about each other, and each others needs. Yes, it was a little like Peyton Place, too, but, overall it was a great place to raise kids, start a business, attend community events…and celebrate the holidays. We had the Big Park in our little downtown…that always hosted the local 4th of July Celebration and everyone came out all 3 nights to meet with their neighbors, drink some beer, and play a little Bingo. It really was a Norman Rockwell Painting. We used to have Front porches, so we could wave to each other on those warm summer evenings and find out the latest gossip. I used to cut my neighbor’s yard…she was an older woman and her kids lived out of town…so, I’d sit with her on her front porch swing….talk about stuff that a 10 year old girl would talk about and cut her yard with my Dad’s push mower every week. I don’t know why I did it…I wasn’t paid for it…didn’t even ask for any pay…I just knew she needed her grass cut, and I had the time to do it. I actually enjoyed doing it….I guess it was the satisfaction of accomplishing a task and standing back to look at my masterpiece…Of course, she would smile, and say thank you, and we’d sit and talk and drink lemonade before I’d say goodnight and cross the yard to my front door.
There are days when I look at our lives, our businesses, our economy, our politicians, our leaders, our industries and I just wonder, what happened? The 50′s are gone, but do we have to lose the FEELING of the 50′s? I’m all for progress, innovation, change, and making a good living….as long as we think about the consequences of our forward movement. Lately, I think we’ve lost our moral compass, we’ve been growing, progressing, innovating, and creating huge industries, huge corporations without the necessary follow- through, the required for-thought, the long term vision of why we are doing what we are doing. We seem to have lost our human element. We seem to have misplaced our WHY. What happened to caring about the outcome and the consequences of our behavior?
Just listening to the news in the past month has cause for alarm. Sure, we’ve got the mortgage crisis, the financial crisis, the European Market crisis, the potential China bubble, and now we’ve got the Gulf Oil crisis…with BP in the center. Are we becoming too big to care? Are we willing to sit and watch the news every day, or listen to the latest radio commentary and just let it go in one ear and out the other? I hope not. Every crisis this country , this world, is experiencing…affects a person, a family, a community. And yet, it seems as if we as a nation have become hardened by all of them, as if, it’s someone’s else’s problem, it doesn’t apply to us, it’s water cooler talk, or twitter feed.
Have we become too big to care? I’d like to propose that we use our technology, our Social Media tools for a cause. I’d like to bring the human element back in style…50′s style. I’d like to ask for our leaders to lead, not hide behind their politics, or point fingers at each other. That’s not leadership, that’s not showing Courage in the heat of the battle, that’s just pure cowardness. You see it’s easy to pass the buck, to not take responsibility, to not stand-up for what you believe in, to not be accountable for your decisions and the consequences of them. It’s easy to be a coward, to hide, to point fingers, to talk about the other guy, to blame others for your failures, to feel sorry for yourself, to show a true lack of integrity.
On the other hand, it’s hard to be a leader. It takes more than work. It takes the desire, the will, the emotional labor to want to change and leave the world a better place for your efforts.
Yes, I’m an optimist because I do think we can take back our moral compass. I believe we can recapture the human element of CARING about others, their businesses, their livelihoods, their families, their communities. BUT, we have to use our abilities, our talents, our skills, in a productive way. We have to let our voices be heard. We have to take back our society and start to plant seeds that will grow strong leaders, stewards of our resources, communities that care for one another, just because it’s the right thing to do…not because it’s pays something, or we expect reciprocity from it….but, just because we are the human race and we’ve been given this glorious planet to share with one another.
I shudder to think that the BP’s of the world, with all their clout, their technical expertise, their fancy offices, their multi-billion dollar executives can’t LEAD and take accountability for the horrific consequence they’ve created by not perfecting a back-up plan for the what -if. But, do we all have to sit in front of our TV’s for another month and pontificate about it….I think not. I think it’s time to Lead. To let our voices be heard, to start electing politicians that know how to LEAD and not just double speak.
This goes for all of us. From President Obama down to the president of the PTA….and everyone in between. If we decide that we’re not going to be too big to Care…then the opposite must be true. We will start looking at each other differently, we’ll start asking what we can do to make a difference in someone else’s life, we’ll start respecting each others differences and embracing them, we’ll start protecting our precious resources and becoming stewards of our Earth. We can beat this thing called too big to care…we just have to care enough to push through the resistance and make it happen.
If only more than 30 people would hear this.