Our Future Is Bounded By Our Own Perceptions

I watched a man being interviewed on TV recently who had received a pink slip after 20 years of employment in a top-notch job paying over $100,000 a year. He was despondent because he was unable to find another high-level position and he wasn’t able to meet his bills.

I feel empathy for him because I know losing one’s job after so many years must be extremely difficult, but I feel even more compassion for him because he feels hopeless and unable to see any creative alternatives.

He seems unable to comprehend that he has choices other than repeating the patterns of the past 20 years. Downsizing his lifestyle and trading a large mortgage payment for a lesser one did not seem to be an option in his thinking. Nor did he think about allowing his two sons in college to take on responsibility for helping finance their their education.

It seems that finding comparable employment or losing everything were his only two realities.

I worked my way through college. My father was dead and my mother had a fourth grade education, and no viable means of helping. It took me five and a half years to get my first degree but I honored every opportunity to learn and made the most of every class. A few years later, my husband went through college while working a full-time job in a lumber mill. We drove older cars for transportation, budgeted carefully and embraced a modest lifestyle.

Recently, our youngest son graduated from college. It only took him four years. He lived in a small basement room, worked almost full time, never owned a car and used public transportation, took out a student loan, and with the exception of $1,500 from his father the last semester of his senior year, he did it all himself.

Sometimes, the loss of wealth can be a gift. Perhaps, the middle-aged man interviewed on TV will benefit from this period of his life and find a new value system. Getting off the fast track might be enjoyable and finding out who he is outside of the roles he played and the salary he earned just might bring about a healthier self-image. If he can begin to shift his perception, he might even come to bless the adversity and see how self-empowered it helped him become. Embracing change, seeing that life is full of options and that we are only limited by our perceptions, brings true freedom. I hope that one day this man is free!