THE GREAT DEPRESSION ?

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel is a book of the strength of people. It also makes you wonder how they can compare the current economic conditions to the great depression. Quotes from the book like the following are truly motivational for me, and hopefully for you.

“I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released…I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows. Someone who lost money found that his life was gone. When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity…

We thought American business was the Rock of Gibraltar. We were the prosperous nation, and nothing could stop us now…There was a feeling of continuity. If you made it, it was there forever. Suddenly the big dream exploded. The impact was unbelievable.”

“Here were all these people living in old, rusted-out car bodies. I mean that was their home. There were people living in shacks made of orange crates. One family with a whole lot of kids were living in a piano box. This wasn’t just a little section, this was maybe ten-miles wide and ten-miles long. People were living in whatever they could junk together.”

GRATITUDE ATTITUDE

Did you know that when you are feeling grateful you are not feeling a whole lot of other negative emotions? If you can practise a gratitude attitude you will be amazed at how your life will change. There is an old hymn about "Count your Many Blessings".

The reason for that? You cannot feel sad when you start counting your blessings, they do not fit in the same mind. It will bring a smile to your face and before you know it you are wondering why you were depressed in the first place.

We all have so much to be thankful there is no way we can sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. When our family worked for "Families Helping Families" building houses for poor families in Mexico, we never left feeling that we were extremely blessed and very grateful for our little house in Arizona.

This picture is a picture of our neighbors. They are squatters who threw up this shack behind a house two doors down from us. They are hooked in to the electricity of the neighbors and the water. They have kids, and their kids leave everyday for school looking clean and dressed and pressed.