Namaste

My sister sent this to me and I thought I would pass it along...

"While God was creating the universe, He called upon an angel, telling the angel that He had one last job to do. The angel was to help God hide the most precious gift- lasting peace and joy. This is the treasure of life. 'Because this treasure is valuable beyond description I want you to hide it so that humans will know its value to be immeasurable when it is found.' So, the angel thought of several places: the highest mountain, the great desert wilderness, the vast reaches of the universe. But, God was not satisfied. All of these felt like places where the treasure would be too easily found. Finally, with a flash of inspiration, the Creator said: 'Hide the treasure of life within the human being. He will look there last and, when he finally finds it, he will know how precious this treasure truly is.'"

-swami rama of the himalayas, from "sacred journey"

"Get out and go shopping"

So, I was watched TV or listening to the radio or something the other day and I heard this commercial asking people to "go out and go shopping!". I kind of blew it off at the time and didn't think that much about it. But for some reason over the last few days I have been thinking a lot about that commercial.

At first I thought "oh cool, trying to stimulate the economy by telling people to go shopping" but the more I thought about it the more I found it offensive. I work exclusively with people who are in career transition. Some who held their job with a particular company for 20 years and were completely blindsided and others who saw the writing on the wall. It doesn't really matter how they found themselves looking for their next job, the point is this is their reality right now. I am sure all of these clients of mine (and everyone else in job search who doesn't have the awesome benefit of being my client) would love to "go out and go shopping". Unfortunately, right now they are trying to figure out how to pay their regular bills, keep their house out of foreclosure and their car from being repossessed.

Believe me, I get how the world works, everyone goes out and buys a new shirt, then the stores need to manufacture more shirts. Now both the stores and the manufacturers need to hire more people to keep up with the demand. Not to mention the people who need to be hired for advertising etc., blah, blah, blah... it is a domino effect. I get it. The problem is, it has to start somewhere. It seems it has to start with money in our pocket to go out to the store to buy the products to save the world.

Seems we are stuck in a Catch 22 because the people who need to "get out and go shopping" are the same people who were recently (or in a lot of cases, not so recently) let go from their jobs and are spending their time immersed in the grueling task of finding a job. Or they are the people who were asked to take a 5%-10% pay-cut, or forgo their bonuses this year.

So, I think in the end, these commercials just made me angry. I feel like it is the "what comes first, the chicken or the egg question" all over again.

I ask you, what do you think?


www.getmeunstuck.com