I truly believe Karyn's post the other day that relationships are the main factor in giving, because through relationships we truly understand the depth of a problem. This has happened to me just in the last few days. I have been sympathetic to those that have been affected by the global financial crisis since the beginning (except for the giant corporate CEO's and Madoff's of the crisis). I hate to hear on the news the stories about people being laid off, companies going bankrupt, towns in financial meltdown.
However, the depth of the pain of this crisis didn't hit me until the other day when my mom told me that she had been laid off. After 28 years working at the same company, she doesn't have a job, and won't for the next 4-6 months.
And then Tuesday was the last day for four of my coworkers who were also being laid off. And today I get an email from a friend who would no longer be checking his work email because he was also being laid off. This crisis is incredibly personal for me now.
I can understand the cutbacks that people are having to make in order to survive a family members' being laid off, because I am making some of those same cutbacks. I can understand the pain and despair of losing a job and the uncertainty for the future that this brings, because I hear this in my parents' voices.
The question is, what do we do with this pain? This despair? This uncertainty?
I think we can be open to letting this transform our lives; allowing it to help us understand the poor even more. We can use these trying times to reprioritize our lives. We can use it to draw nearer to our families and friends, relying on them for support. What we cannot do is forget those that still have less.
-Stephen Donahoe
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