What Do You Do?
So I got some crappy news at the start of my day, it turns out our child tax benefit had been cut in half; yet another in a long series of us getting screwed by the government. First they give you money, so you adjust for having it, then they take it away…retroactively…and charge you retroactive interest because YOU didn’t catch THEIR mistake even though YOU have no idea how THEY calculate these things, or rather how they’re supposed to.
So like Keanu Reeves in Speed I ask myself “What do you do?”
Get angry? Sure, Done. Check. What’s next?
Do you write your MLA/MP? Think hard about who you plan to support in the municipal election?
Freak out and go on vacation or buy yourself Rock Band on the Wii before the government takes all your money? Go the other way and put every last penny into high interest savings? Start living like a pauper? Well, more like a pauper. Cut your entertainment budget and just re-enjoy the stuff you already have like Birth of the Federation (more on this in an upcoming post) and an awesome mp3 collection? Take a second job, like perhaps the aforementioned municipal election?
What do you do?
You could wait for when you file your taxes and start to get credit for all that money you shell out on daycare and hope you’ll be better positioned afterwards. You could wait for the next election and vote for whoever wants to increase daycare and other social assistance funding to people in your situation and cut taxes for your bracket. You could just tough it out until the kid is old enough to go to public school. You could endure today and live for tomorrow.
But then something Obama once said came to mind: “What if we are the ones we’re been waiting for?”
Enduring today is no way to live. Waiting for tomorrow is problematic because what you’re waiting for may never come – or more morbidly you may not live to see it. What if it’s up to you? What if YOU are what you’re waiting for? What do you do then?
It’s not a specific plan of action, it doesn’t solve your problem, but it tells you to get off your butt and stop feeling sorry for yourself because you got a raw deal. There are problems out there that are fully within your grasp, situations that you have the power to improve for the better. So are you going to let a setback get you down, make you use less of your power to make the world a better place or are you going to choose to let it get you fired up to do more where you can?
Life is like the environment. At a glance, and even oftentimes upon closer inspection, it seems too daunting a task; too huge for any one person to make better. But if you identify areas where you can be better, where you can make positive change, then that could be your tipping point. Yes it was political will that banned CFCs that lead to the recovery of the ozone layer but that political will came from countless people doing what they could. So can I change the government taking money out of my pockets? No. Can I use that frustration to fuel positive change somewhere else in my life? Can you?
Yes we can.
