When the going gets tough....the tough go home

Its everywhere you look and everywhere you listen lately. Its unavoidable and for most people I know, its reality. Its the.....economy. Its life right now and to be perfectly frank (no, my name's not frank...but think of me as frank right now) it really sucks lemons.

There are people that have it worse than we do. I have friends and relatives who have been hit hard, loss of jobs, loss of savings, house values going down and a general difficulty making ends meet. Everywhere you turn, you are faced with the difficulty that is and that is to come for some time. I do truly believe that its going to get much worse before it gets better.

But the question for the day is - what can we learn from this? What can we take away from this difficult time and utilize for the future? How can we turn this into something that we can use to teach our children so that their future is bright instead of just the after-effects of what we left for them? How can we turn around our legacy to the future generations?

First off, we can learn to buy only what we can really afford. We can also place less emphasis on the material good. We can make sure that big financial companies are accountable for their actions, sure. But every time I look at my kids lately and think that this is the mess we are leaving them. Every time I'm sad because there is something that they want and that we have to pick and choose what we can get them. I think...there is something bigger that we can all learn from this. There really truly is. There must be.

Take it or leave it.....but to me...I've found that something. I know what that something is and I will work hard to teach my children this....That when the going gets tough...the tough go home. They embrace their loved-ones, their little ones, their friends and their puppies and kitties. They turn to their family for support and they turn around and lend even more support to those that need them.

It won't fix the economy, but it may just fix something much more important than that.