Interconnectedness....and, spend less than you earn

The other day I fixed dinner while listening to a story on NPR about the interconnectedness of one small town's economy and how it's being slammed in these hard times. One laid-off worker stops spending and impacts another business, which closes down and hurts others, and so on.

I had to turn it off halfway through. It was sounding this endless same single note of alarm - it's bad! it's getting worse! you're screwed and there's nothing you can do about it! - without any glimmer of hope of action people can take or intimation that someday it will get better.

This is all elementary economics that I feel I learned as a reporter in my 20s, never mind later Econ classes. You walk down your town's main street (if you still have one) and look and think and there it is. It's the Wal-Mart effect writ small.

It's also Thich Nhat Hanh's apple meditation, or thoughts on Interbeing or interconnectedness.

The apple meditation is, put simply, an exercise where you take an apple and, as you eat it, realize it could not exist without the water that fed the tree, the air that helped the plant, the soil that nourished the tree's roots - and that this air, soil, and water are all interconnected also with the air we breathe, the soil we garden in or walk on, the water we drink and swim in and pass. The whole world, including you, is in this apple, when you think about it.

It's not such a leap, I thought, as I clicked the radio pre-set to one of my daughter's pop stations, to see that the coffee shop on the corner is connected to the airplane manufacturer down the street...even connected to the Wal-Mart off the interstate.

It is a scary, scary time. Official unemployment in our cities now is 12%. Others have written that those of us who still have jobs have awful levels of stress that we will lose them. My own personal mantra now is: spend less than you earn. On a good month I do and can pay down my debts and squirrel a little a way. It's the only way I can feel a little safe and even then it's pretty tenuous.

People are also finally saying, though, that a real shift is occurring in the way we think, and I see that. People are conserving resources because they can't afford to waste. Good for the planet and ultimately good for us. An economist on Talk of the Nation today was saying that once again hard work is going to be valued and rewarded.

For years I have been angry at George W Bush for telling us to go shopping after 9/11 to show our patriotism. We would have saved string and planted victory gardens then had he asked us. We've lost time but now we are starting.