By this time I am sure you all have received your share of holiday emails and messages reminding you all of all the things that you have to be grateful for, so I won’t bore you with another.
Since I spend most of the year telling you how great your lives are, I thought I would switch gears at this time of year, and remind you of all the things that you have to be annoyed by.
So after you are done with Christmas dinner, I want you all to take a few moments to consider the following:
All the great presents who wished you received that you didn’t. (Can you believe they actually thought you would like that junk they bought you!)
How the holidays turn mildly annoying everyday traffic into lousy logjams filled with totally rude, incompetent drivers who are capable of turning even the most loving and tolerant people into proponents of capital punishment.
The way your company cut back on the Christmas party by having everyone bring something to eat and then docked your paycheck for the time you spent at the party.
Your boss, or boss’s boss – one of them is probably a thorn in your side.
The lovely pre-holiday letter from your bank informing you of the new fees they will charging next year. Happy New Year!
GAS PRICES!!!!
That weird, annoying guy in your neighborhood who tries tirelessly to piss everybody else off – and succeeds!
Your kid’s idiot teacher who seems to know less about the subject matter than the students but insists your child is the source of all the problems in their class.
CONGRESS!
Government red tape!
Corporate greed!
Kim Kardashian – or any Kardashian!
Mindless, stupid newscasts!
Doomsayers, and anyone who finds a way to turn a normal conversation into a discussion of the Mayan calendar and the end of the world.
TAXES!
Ok, are you all pretty disgusted and fumed now? Are you ready to go postal at your local post office now? (Provided the budget cuts didn’t close that one down.)
Now take a deep breath, and think about all the people in your life who make all that crap worth putting up with.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A WONDERFUL, BLESSED NEW YEAR MAKING ALL OF THEM AS HAPPY AS YOU CAN!
Profit and public responsibility, or at least accountability, are not unrelated. In fact, maybe they are inexorably connected to each other. But don’t just take my word for it.
The recent backlash over proposed new debit card fees by banks in America is the perfect example. The fact that those banks finally listened to the protestations of their customers is the best news yet for the future of America – and the future of capitalism.
Because the last two years have been a real test for business in America making many wonder if capitalism would survive the backlash of public protests.
But the reality is that outside of a few wacky extremists crying for outright socialism most Americans don’t oppose capitalism or profits. What they are fed up, and rightfully so, is the proliferation of unfettered GREED and the rise of an embarrassingly irresponsible corporate culture of selfishness!
Case in point: the debit card fee fiasco. This all began in September after Bank of America foolishly decided to try to nickel and dime the American public (the same American public who bailed them out with a huge stimulus just a few years ago) by adding a $5-a-month fee to use debit cards. Other banks soon announced they would do the same.
Within a few months there was a huge public outcry from customers with many threatening to leave en masse. All this finally made all the banks including Bank of America reverse their decision.
Now obviously these banks changed their minds because they realized that in this particular situation they stood to lose customers. And that would cost them more profit in the long run than they would make in the short run by adding the fees.
But maybe this is more than just an isolated case. Maybe it means that corporate America is remembering the bottom line of capitalism is not just dollars, but SENSE too – common sense that says that caring about people, about the world around you will improve your profits. That’s because people are more apt to work for and buy from companies that are nice instead of nasty. It is proven time and time again.
Henry Ford, one of the greatest, and most successful, capitalists in American history – the father of the assembly line – purposely raised his employees’ salaries more than he needed to in order to enable them to buy his cars. That wasn’t just because he was a nice guy. He knew it would create generations of Ford Customers that would inevitably in the long run earn the company much more than it cost in the short run. But the byproduct of that was he made a whole lot of employees happier and better off too, and he was probably the happier for it as well!
Now I do not think it is government’s responsibility to make these companies act morally. (The exception is when the whole game is rigged for instance in the case of collusion or monopoly.) We need free will and free markets in order for moral decisions to be possible. God does not make us do the right thing, and neither should government.
I truly believe eventually the people will get tired of being taken advantage of, and they will rise up and make these companies do the right thing with the power of their wallets.
But if everything I have said is true then it begs the question: Why have there been so many short-sighted selfish companies in the last few decades in America?
The answer is simple – stupidity! If everyone (the companies, the employees and the consumers) prospers more in the long run, by running a considerate and socially responsible business, then only a fool would do differently.
But thank God some of those fools are beginning to wise up.
As Labor Day appraoches so does too the unofficial end of summer and happily the end of the summer heat. The long weekend is celebrated with backyard barbecues and pool parties, as families and friends gather together for one last chance to have some summer fun, while football fans everywhere celebrate the beginning of football season.
But do any of us really stop and think about what Labor Day is really about and why it was important enough to be a holiday in the first place? Well, the first Labor Day in the United States became a federal holiday in 1894 as a way for the government to reconcile with unions and citizens in general, after workers were killed by U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, 15 years earlier.
The killing was of course one of those tragic and unintended mishaps, but it made many in the country realize that there needed to be some safeguards installed in our system that would help to protect laborers from exploitation and abuse. Making Labor Day an official holiday was meant to signal that our government recognized that the everyday laborer, no matter how menial the job, was important, had an innate value, and was worthy of all the same human rights of business owners, gentry and those in government. And that they would never again be forgotten or mistreated.
In other words, Labor Day is supposed to remind us not only of the value of hard work, but that all those who do it are human beings, not just cogs in a machine.
But this Labor Day maybe it’s an even more poignant reminder for a very important and overlooked particular group of workers: the unemployed. Those struggling to find work are just as important, valuable and meaningful as everyone else — and it is important to remember that in the search for new work.
Helping each other
With the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent, we all need to help those without work to find it. It’s our Christian duty to help them.
Because when we are not able to work, we feel less than human somehow, less than involved, less than important. And nobody should ever feel that.
Just as the federal government eventually recognized that every worker needed to be treated as a human being with human rights, not just as a means to production, we must all remember that our value is not just what we can produce in our labor.
We derive our value from God, and from the knowledge that we were created to love and be loved. One of the ways we can do that is by working and helping society with something that it needs. Another one of the ways that we realize that value is by letting people love us and to let them experience the divinely ordained joy that comes from that. There should never be any shame involved in needing others.
So if you are looking for work, reach out to anyone you know and proudly tell them you want to work, and ask if they know anyone who needs someone of your exquisite and unique value.
And for all of you who know anyone who needs work, it is your duty to help them to regain their feelings of worth and value, and to help them find work.
Times are tough all over, and we all need to stop thinking that “help” is a four letter word. We all need to work together in every way we can to celebrate the value of humanity — and that’s something we can really celebrate this Labor Day.
October 16th
10 am
St. Rose’s Parent/Teen Picnic and Retreat
Good Shepherd Mission
45033 North 12th Street
New River, AZ
A Grand Canyon University Sponsored Event
October 24th
7 pm
St. Theresa’s Youth Group
St. Theresa Parish
5045 E. Thomas Road
Phoenix, AZ
A Grand Canyon University Sponsored Event
October 30th
Singles Talk
Mount Claret
4633 N. 54th Street
Phoenix, AZ
A Grand Canyon University Sponsored Event
November 8th
8 am
Seton High School
Featured Keynote to School Assembly
7 pm
Talk to Parents
1150 N Dobson Road
Chandler , AZ
A Grand Canyon University Sponsored Event
November 19-20
Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies Retreat
Bishop de Falco Retreat Center
2100 North Spring
Amarillo, TX
806-383-1811
December 1st
7 pm
Holy Cross Youth Group
1244 S. Power Rd.
Mesa AZ
A Grand Canyon University Sponsored Event
December 4th
Advent Parish Mission/St. Rose’s
Good Shepherd Mission
45033 North 12th Street
New River, AZ
A Grand Canyon University Sponsored Event
Walt Disney was fired from his first job drawing farm animals for a farm journal. John van Hengle, the founder of St. Mary’s Food Bank, lost his advertising job and wound up practically homeless before finding his way.
Both of them changed the world.
Have you lost your job? Are you hurting financially, struggling to get back in the game? You are not alone. But your job loss could be the ultimate opportunity to find your true purpose and to realize that losing your job should not mean you have lost your value.
The unemployment rate in the United States is around 9.6%. That’s a staggering number. But it’s what happens after the job is lost that is the real tragedy.
We have been programmed in America over the last few decades to believe that we derive our value as a human being from our ability to make money. The idea we can find our “net worth” by adding up all our debts and assets and arriving at our value as a human being is preposterous.
Your real, innate value was made by God and that’s what inspires your economic value, not the other way around. Realizing that is the first step to getting back on your feet.
In fact that’s actually how capitalism is supposed to work. It’s not predicated on greed and selfishness but actually meant to inspire people to use their God-given gifts, ideas and abilities to provide the world with something it needs. They are then rewarded with what they need. Or in the words of the late Pope John Paul II “the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.”
Unfortunately capitalism hasn’t worked real well over the last few years because too many people were either cheating the system or simply looking to make an easy buck instead. Moral responsibility is an integral and irreplaceable component of both a healthy society and a healthy economy.
But therein lies an amazing opportunity to help set the system straight again. How do we do that? By doing what God put us here to do – to use our gifts to improve the world.
Every one of us has something the world needs, and by learning how to share that gift with the world for all the right reasons, we are rewarded with what we need eventually.
Your desire and ability to reach out to and contribute to the world is a divinely inspired asset that can and will still lead you to long-term and stable career success once you engage it. Finding your mission is finding the job or career that will allow you to do that.
Yes, it doesn’t always happen overnight, and it’s not always so easy. It took good old Walt a decade of struggling to make ends meet, and after John van Hengle lost his job, he did everything from lifeguard to bus driver to working in a soup kitchen before he found his calling helping the hungry, only after he came to know and understand hunger himself.
Not to be overly simplistic but God does work in mysterious ways. Your value is assigned by God, and it is not rooted in how much you earn, but in HOW and WHY you earn.
The world needs you somewhere and somehow right now. Maybe it’s through a volunteer organization where you can obtain some of your needs in return or a part-time job or turning a favorite hobby into a freelance job. Get out there and find out how you can help because the world needs a lot of help.
That might not just help you to find a new job but a whole new career and greater happiness than you have ever known.
Chris Benguhe’s latest book, “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies,” is available on Amazon.com. His website is www.OneMoreDayAlive.com.
Categories
Tag Cloud
abortion Benguhe capitalism Catholic TV celebrities charity christmas crime earn Economy employment faith giving Guns happiness healthcare heroism hope how to ask for help how to be ethical how to find a job how to help insurance is capitalism evil jobs labor love mental health money morality Obama redemption religion respect respect for life right to life robbery role models Success tough times TV unemployment Valentine's Day welfare workArchives
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
