Downsized March 15, 2025

 

 

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” says a paraphrase of a John Lennon song, who stole the saying from a poet whose name I have forgotten.

This is never so true as to the events going on with the federal government these days as the new administration makes massive cuts to funding of not-for-profits and other organizations.

Just when you think life is secure, when you have all your ducks in a row (as the old cliché goes), something mucks up the works (another cliché) and you end up scrambling to put your life back together, but don’t quite yet know how.

  Although correct in theory, the idea of reducing the work force has an unexpected impact on the people involved.

People make plans; they assume they can get on with their lives securely. They believe that if they had put enough time into their careers, they will be rewarded, and perhaps get on pursuing their own interest, dreams they had since childhood for the first time possible.

Then, like lightning, they are struck down, and forced to reevaluate their lives, and reinvest in careers they’d assumed as solidly positioned.

I can only imagine the panic, and the desperation these people must feel, and how betrayed they have been by a system they believed in, not merely jobs, but aspirations.

God help them if they have just purchased a car or taken out a mortgage, and must scramble to find a way to make payments when severance might not be enough, certain unemployment won’t be.

Of course, this leads us to yet another old maxim: God opens a window when he shuts a door – meaning there may be some light at the end of the tunnel (more cliches) which may provide hope unlooked for, unseen in the fog of disaster.

Hope may still reside in the heart of the true believer.

 

email to Al Sullivan