I am of two minds about the current economic “crisis”.  I am deeply saddened when I see people losing their jobs and watching people’s lives turned upside down, but what if a bit of time off is what the people of this country need?

I am not talking in terms of the economic ebb and flow, people being forced to learn practical money management skills, or about the reformation of the rampant corruption on Wall Street.  I’m talking about a much needed paid vacation for a large number of people.  I have quite a few friends that have been laid off or downsized in the last few months and who have what I could only call “a huge sense of relief.”  They aren’t crying and moping around saying “why me”, they are taking life a bit slower and taking this opportunity to make changes in themselves.

For as long as I can remember the average person who gets into the “rat race” between 18-25 and starts working the 40+ hour weeks that it takes to get by runs out of time to advance personally from whatever age they are introduced from.  All of the work that it takes just to fit into our society takes up all of most people’s time.  I think that this keeps them from advancing themselves personally.  “Who has time for introspection, there are bills to be paid?”  Now time has been forced on a large number of Americans and quite a few are embracing this lifestyle change to recharge their mental batteries.  I have noticed that many are taking this time to seek personal growth.

We are told that stress presses down on us from external forces and that the best we can hope for is to find easy coping mechanisms to deal with it.  This is flat out wrong, but if it is all that you are ever taught I can see where people would believe it.  The reality is that stress is not an external force pushing down but an internal force pushing out, it is created by our minds and then presented to the world through our actions.

It is easy to control how much stress you feel as long as you realize that it is you who is creating it.  Once you accept that realization you can begin to look into yourself and see what it is that you are doing to bring this feeling on yourself.  If you know what it is that you are doing to cause stress you can make changes in your life to let yourself relax.  The only problem is that this process takes time that most people don’t feel like they have.  It takes a while sometimes to figure out the whys inside ourselves and I am seeing more and more people who have been forcefully ejected from the rat race taking that time and coming out much happier people.

So it makes me feel both saddened and happy to see that our economy has slowed down tremendously but maybe that is just what Americans need, a forced vacation.