What the crunch has taught me

That we humans feel like we are the most important and intelligent creatures in the world, and what we say goes . . . but we aren’t, and it doesn’t, writes blogger Emma Suddaby.

Time and again, when the thing I’ve been dreading goes and happens, forcing me to make changes in my life that I didn’t want to have to make to accommodate it, it turns out to be a good thing in disguise. 

Life’s good at kicking us up the backside when it feels we need a nudge in the right direction, and we’re not doing it under our own steam.

So when something as serious as the recession we are currently suffering happens, I start to wonder about life’s reasons.

We’ve been hurtling toward the financial rapids for some time now. We’ve grown used to being able to buy pretty much whatever we’ve wanted whether we could afford it or not, because for many years we’ve had salesmen and women begging us to let them lend us the money. 

People with no hope of repaying mortgages have nonetheless been allowed, even encouraged, to move into homes that will one day ruin them. 

I’m amazed anyone in the financial world can see at all with all the blind eyes that have been turned on loan applicants with dodgy credit ratings. And the worst thing of all is that our children have been growing up with no real understanding of what money is worth, and how to earn it.

Now I’m not trying to pretend the credit crunch is just a lovely, sunny walk in the park . . . unfortunately I’m just as skint as the rest of you, and my financial thumbscrews are as tight as anyone else’s right now. 

But I do think the secondary effects of this recession are all positive. It’s about time we remembered how to make do and mend, how to grow our own vegetables and how to save up for the things we want.

It’s a bit of the old Blitz spirit – apparently, Aldi is the new Marks & Spencer and those who previously wouldn’t dream of buying their loo rolls anywhere other than Sainsbury’s, have been happily roughing it with the rest of the world at Netto!

So while the next year or two, if we are to believe those who know, may be a little tight for most of us, like all things, it will pass. And once the financial wrecking-ball has come to rest, I predict we will have learnt far more sustainable ways of living on this planet and the old model of the rich growing richer while the poor grow poorer, will be but a dim and distant memory.

So when life gives you lemons . . . make lemonade!