“To questions of life, chocolate gives an answer articulated in many chunks and flakes.” (Fabrizio Caramagna)
Do you like chocolate chip cookies?
Scotch tape?
Do you like listening to music in your car?
From the Ashes
Toll House Cookies and their chocolate chips were invented (by happy accident) in 1933 during the Great Depression. Scotch tape was invented in the same era. It took off as a product because people didn’t have the money to replace things that broke. They started taping them back together instead. FM Radio was also birthed during the Depression. Families needed inexpensive ways to entertain themselves and the AM radios they had been gathering around just didn’t have the goods to deliver quality sound. Without this boost to the medium, the entire broadcasting industry, and all of the industries that have come from it, would not likely exist. (You certainly wouldn’t be reading or listening to this blog right now!)
None of these innovations make the Great Depression okay. Tremendous suffering, starvation, trauma and struggle came from the collapse of our economy. There is no silver lining. At the same time, in times of struggle like the Depression, we have a way of finding innovation and creating good things out of our pain.
You are an Organic Creature
In spite of our propensity to create artificial things, we are still natural creatures. Just like the other natural creatures, we are in a continual state of reinvention, re-creation, reincarnation.
Reframing “Responsibility”
The Recession of 2008 is another interesting example of what we do and how we do it. When the housing bubble started to burst in 2007, painfully, a whole lot of people lost their homes. There is no positive spin on that. This caused multiple layers of trauma for quite a few people. The domino effect on the economy set off the Recession. That was equally painful with people losing their life’s savings. Again, there is no silver lining here.
However, our adaptations for survival changed the cultural landscape. There was a time when filing bankruptcy or losing one’s house was errantly and judgmentally equated with moral deficiency, carelessness or irresponsibility. During the Recession, people who had done all of the “responsible” things with fidelity were losing everything. I believe this lessened the stigma.
Shifted Mindsets
When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, the adults I knew worked at getting “a good job” that they would stay at for as much of their working years as possible and then retire, hopefully with a pension and at least Social Security, if not a retirement fund that their employer paid into over the years. Having too many jobs on your resume was considered a sign that you were not a reliable employee.
As a Gen X, I have never counted on Social Security to exist in my latter years. I have also never worked for a company that had pensions. I have had a couple of employers over the years that contributed to a 401K, but I was never there long enough to gain anything from them. The Recession pretty much wiped those things out for good in many industries.
The Recession also shifted us to a gig economy. A whole lot of people lost their jobs. Others were left doing the 2-3 other people’s jobs, all for a stagnant or reduced salary. It became clear that companies were not going to be tangibly looking out for their employees. As a result, employment contracts transitioned to something that relies more on mutuality and respect than an employee's loyalty to any particular company. As long as the arrangement benefits both parties, we stay. When it stops benefitting either acceptably, the relationship is terminated. The median employee tenure in the US is now 4.05 years across genders.
Some things are lost in this equation and some are gained. We recreated our concept of “work life.” We took that mutuality contract one step further following the Pandemic after learning experientially that most positions can be done well from home.
Mother Necessity
In my Trauma and Identity blog the other week I mentioned that trauma/fear choke out creativity. Fearfully clinging to what once was often makes us fragile and vulnerable. Accepting our natural organic state as constantly evolving beings can free up our creativity and ability to adapt. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine an unknown future, but when we are connected to our legacy as creative adaptators, the innovations can flow!
Think of this the next time something changes on you and you struggle to find a new path forward. It’s there. We just have to find it! (You might consider baking some chocolate chip cookies as a reminder. It might not help, but it might not hurt either!)