Reconstruction

Ok, remember at the top of this blog I said it would be non-linear?  You may need a road map to follow me on this one, because we might go down a few side paths, hit a dead-end or two, and I haven't a clue where we will end up.  It's all about the journey, right?

Today's news brings sadness.  Vi Hilbert, a tribal elder for the Upper Skagit Salish died.  I had a chance to meet her once, at a reception, and thoroughly enjoyed her grace and sense of "been there done that" calm that she had.  The fact that there is someone considered "tribal elder" is something, I think, we need to start thinking about as we consider how we got into this economic, and hence social mess, and how we're going to find ways to get out of it.

There is a bit of chatter among the opinion forming class that what is really wrong with this country is a crisis of confidence.   That even if the next administration and Congress dumps billions and billions of dollars into infrastructure and so-called green jobs programs, the economy won't change because we are not feeling confident.  

I have rarely subscribed to the idea that economic decisions are based on feeling confident on a social level.  But in this case, I think the pundits are correct.  And while I completely agree that one of the reasons we don't feel confident is our money, our savings, have evaporated, I also think it's because we have lost our bearings.  We got lost in a wilderness of taking care only of ourselves and not our community.

Indeed, at the risk of sounding a bit like a primitivist, I think we need to get back to behaving a bit like a tribe, where we assume care, as a group, for everyone.  Our quality of lives rise and fall with each other's sense of well being.  I am in no way advocating socialism, but I am sensing that we have forgotten our tribal elders, that we don't seek their knowledge and wisdom, and that we have failed to insure that each of us is ok.

I have a friend, Dave, who is retired.  He and his wife, Mary Lu, are retired school teachers.  Their children were their students.  And now their children are their cats.  He has a small craftsman business building fly rods.  Gorgeous fly rods.  Mary Lu, an artist in her own right, helps.  They make enough money, between their retirement and the rod business, to keep their home in Virginia and have two small homes in Montana.  And Dave is constantly telling me about neighbors and friends he has helped.  A little money there, a rod to a returning vet here...he is the tribal elder making sure everyone in his tribe is ok.   I keep telling Dave that he is my hero.  

And that is our job, now, is to reconstruct our tribe to finding ways of caring.  To instill those values so that when the next temptation of a boom comes along (pssst, lady, do you know your house is worth a million bucks?  Why don't you take some money out, spend it, live well.  I have a mortgage just for you...) we all stop, evaluate, and realize our lives are far better off as they are now.  

As we reconstruct out society perhaps we should consult the Vi Hiberts of our tribe.  And we also might want to think about the great joy we get in making sure everyone is doing well.