Michael Lippman

The word depression has been popping up a lot lately, have you noticed?  It's in the news.  The word is on people's lips in a way it hasn't been for a long time, if ever.  Are we in a depression?  Is there going to be another Great Depression?  The last five years have seen the greatest loss in real income since ... the Great Depression.  And so on and so on.

Depression has its own value, of course.  It takes us deeper.  And as we go deeper, we find ourselves. 

Take a moment today to feel how you feel.  To stop the 'go go go' mania you have come to believe is your natural state, or that you believe ought to be your natural state. 

Slow down.  Take a deep breath.  Have a meal.  Sit down.  Chew your food.  

Is it possible, is it at all possible, that you are going so fast because you're scared that if you slowed down and took a breath you would feel that depression?  

As Thomas Friedman brilliantly points out in the NY Times today , we are going to have to go through this depression, each one of us, individually, before we can collectively come out the other side.