Obsession With Now

I remember years ago being taught to make a plan and day by day plug along, making adjustments as I go along. The Japanese model of long-term thinking was praised as a mature, smart, forward looking model based on steady principles and hard work and long-term thinking. This made sense to me because at the time I was at an existential crossroads deciding if I wanted to be full-time human being or an in-the-moment, care-free product of the epicurean sixties.

I decided to buckle down, set my eyes on a future prize and work like a beaver to get there (that may be the most cliché-filled sentence I've ever written).

 It worked! I trudged on through ups and downs with a steady upward movement, and along the way I even picked up a few nifty principles as guidelines.

I still maintain this long-term bent. It's ingrained, which makes what I see all the more obvious and troubling.

Especially in the last two years, I see more and more people obsessing over short-term numbers and events. In 2006, in the RE biz, it seemed like buying and selling had shortened to a matter of months. TV programs were frantically following minute by minute up and down ticks in the stock market, and when they talked about "long-term" they meant weeks not years.

RE agents were advising people that if they stayed in a home for a year or so they would do okay. A year or so! I would hardly be unpacked.

Politicians were promising short-term ....well, they have always been this way.

Now, today, it seems everyone is obsessed with the short-term and not willing to go though any sacrifice to allow short-term downs to adjust in a natural way. We won't short-term fixes and it seems no one is concerned about long-term consequences. It appears we are going to choose a president based on what this person can do for us RIGHT NOW, not what the person will do to ensure a stable future.

We want the possible recession fixed RIGHT NOW, not allow a free market to adjust according to economic laws. We want mortgages fixed, mistakes erased - and every number is critical, in need of immediate tweaking in a context-free world, even if it just makes us feel better.

Me? I'm just plugging along.