As I push my shopping cart through the crowded grocery store, I see a hundred different people all with their own individual stories, experiences, and struggles. But one struggle we all share in common these days is the struggle of buying our groceries without overburdening our pockets.
Every generation experiences the financial pressure of an economic downturn. And many generations feel it more than once.
For those of you who, like me, are experiencing that financial clinch for the first time as an adult, it is an eye-opening experience.
My flooding-over grocery cart gives me plenty of looks from fellow shoppers. One woman even stops to give me a pat on the shoulder.
“I don’t envy you.” She says with a sweeping motion at my overstuffed cart.
Whether she is sympathetic to how much food I apparently prepare in a given month or the bill that will reach me at the check-out counter here in a few minutes, I am unsure. But I share sympathy with any person spending as much as I do at the grocery store these days.
Even without snack-foods for the kids, name brand buying, and all but eliminating any “luxury” food items for our family, money is tight.
Those dollar bills in our monthly grocery buying envelope are less and less effective at adequately feeding our family.
It is a pain many are facing. Not just my household.
And with the pain comes the constant concern that it will only increase.
How much worse will the pain from this recession get before the pressure starts to release?
The answer is a mystery.
Hours upon hours of YouTube opinions add their voices to economic professionals – many debating the expected length of this most recent economic decline.
But the honest truth is, no one knows exactly how long this storm will last.
We just know we’re in it.
If the year 2020 taught us anything, it was that we are all in the boat together. Situations might be different person to person – our individual health, family, and finance struggles are our own – but we’re all living through the same storm.
In 2020, we weathered the Covid storm. Now we must weather through this recession. Together. As a society.
There is no single notion of advice that can be a fix-all Band-Aid for each individual person as they struggle through this economic hardship.
…No one knows exactly how long this storm will last.
But there is one single action we can do to help us wage through this storm.
And that is to keep our chins up.
The sun always shines after a storm. Whether the storm lasts a few hours or weeks.
The sun always comes out.
And somehow, majestically, it often looks brighter and clearer than we remember it looking before the storm began.
So keep up that chin. Don’t let your head fall down in despair. Keep your head up, face the storm, and keep an eye out for that moment the sun begins shining through.
Because it will.
That’s a promise I can actually make.[]
