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Home › Money

Liz Smith | 04/19/2009 11:00 pm

Liz Smith on Adversity: 'I Wish I Had a Paying Job With a Salary'

By Liz Smith RSS
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In response to: As we fight through difficult times, what might be the blessings of adversity?
Liz Smith

As a privileged member of what’s left of the middle class, I think it may be pushy of me to speak about "adversity." I am not being evicted, put on food stamps, standing in the employment lines or bereft of my pittance of savings.

But the nation is suffering adversity and there are some blessings. We are done (I hope) with the worship of Wall Street, stock markets, high finance, hedge funds and corporate bullshit where people deal with pieces of paper that are meaningless. 

Maybe this means the majority will go back to decent hard work, pay for services, and a more reasonable look at our money and how we spend it. We will appreciate having a job for a change instead of worshipping our stock-market returns and our property. (In fact, I wish I had a paying job with a salary right now.)  

It would be great if adversity caused us to recover our manners, our courtesy, our consideration for other people. A lot of people do seem to be nicer these days.  But we have a long way to go in restoring common decency.

Read more about: Adversity, Economic Crisis, Lifestyle, Money

10 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Frannie Em
Amen!
By Frannie Em on 04/20/2009 1:10 am
Rosanne Sachson

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating”..Oscar Wilde

I too have the same wish-a creative "paying" project but, not if one needs to give up civility and a zest for life!

By Rosanne Sachson on 04/20/2009 1:29 am
nan rae
Rosanne, I guarantee you will always be civil and always have your zest for life…creative "paying" project or not.  Besides, anyone who can quote Oscar Wilde so easily is fascinating!
By nan rae on 04/20/2009 1:28 pm
Cheryl Mitchell
Amen to that Liz.  Common decency…where is it? what happened?
By Cheryl Mitchell on 04/20/2009 8:24 am
Eileen Alannah

Yes, we do have a long way to go in restoring common decency and the sad thing is that people have forgotten how this actually "adds" to our life, how we ourselves benefit from good manners and from being kind, not to mention those endorphin-raising feelings of self worth that come to you after a job well-done no matter how small.

And Liz, I would pay to read your column on the web, can’t that be rigged up, for the price of a newspaper we could log onto wowowow?

By Eileen Alannah on 04/20/2009 9:23 am
nan rae
Well Liz, I used to be quite the optimist as well but when you say "…done with the worship of Wall Street"….life is long, memory is short!  Just wait a generation or two, and we’ll be right back at the trough. Or in other words, ‘How can you keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Broadway.’  Who would have thought after the ‘Great’Depression that we’d see a repeat.  For that matter, after Vietnam, who thought Americans would create another war.
By nan rae on 04/20/2009 1:06 pm
O E

Yes, many people will forget the hard times and go back to being greedy, under the delusion of what "the American dream" means.  It’s all a fraud: the big home, the back yard with the pool, the big boy toys, the motor home blocking the driveway, the big truck and bigger van.  Unless you pay for it all in cash, forget it.  That’s not "the American dream".  The real American dream is a country where you can do or say whatever pleases you (as long at it doesn’t offend or hurt someone else in any way); it is living free of fear and marrying whomever you love (which was not the case with the Bush administration;  they wanted you to be fearful, so they could screw the country while you peed in your pants. They also wanted you to stay single if you’re homosexual, because the Bush administration people think it is better to stay in the closet and be unfaithful to the spouse, than to be honest.)

By O E on 04/20/2009 3:11 pm
angelyn palmer

i think adversity is what makes us stronger i know i am stringr in ways since my stroke i think i ammuch more awre and pay greater attention to things i took for granted loving and suportive famiy and friends and the importance of s help mate as the bible puts it

 

By angelyn palmer on 04/21/2009 1:21 pm
angelyn palmer
instead of common decency we should call it respect which i think is much more impotant
By angelyn palmer on 04/21/2009 1:28 pm
Roxanne Cohen
I agree completely with getting our decency and respect back…those two things go a long way to make us a happier society.  The physical "stuff" we collect during our lives adds nothing to the quality of how we treat others and think of ourselves.  Is Back To Basics too much to ask??
By Roxanne Cohen on 04/21/2009 2:46 pm