On November 21,  I submitted a post to Active Rain in which I dropped the term “security of relevance” in the accounting of a job loss. That concept raised a few curious questions, so I will expound in this post.

Most of us human bipeds come equipped with egos, ids, and a bunch more of those psychological tags that allow us to identify ourselves as individuals with a purpose in the greater scheme of things. As we grow into adults, most of us actually begin to feel we are somehow important, or relevant, to other bipeds. We begin to think that other bipeds like and love us for what we think and do. We educate ourselves to add competency to our relevance, to become employable, to have purpose and gain the satisfaction of accomplishment, and of course to have automobile and mortgage payments.

Many bipeds believe they work to gain the medium of exchange, the dollar in this United States, and that is certainly true. The dollar brings with it the ability to buy much of what Abraham Maslow referred to in his “hierarchy of human needs”; namely food, clothing and shelter (and leather seats in most Realtor®-mobiles). So when a human biped becomes unemployed, a certain rip occurs in the fabric of the “hierarchy”. The threat of loss of shelter (ones home), loss of food, and loss of those leather seats is disturbing. There is an almost immediate and somewhat frantic effort to replace the job, or otherwise gain a stream of income to keep the basics, not to mention the luxuries, of the biped’s life in place.

There is, however, a loss that is equal to or even greater than loss of income, and that is loss of relevance. The suddenly unemployed person no longer has purpose. The reason to get out of bed is gone. The feelings of satisfaction that come from a job well done are gone. The camaraderie of working with other people with common purpose is gone. The purpose of education and years of experience is gone. The unemployed biped has lost the “security of relevance”. For most normal people, depression becomes part of their daily life.

Over 10 million Americans are now unemployed. 2.8 million of those Americans became unemployed in the past 12 months, negatively impacting much of the population of the United States. The unemployment rate is 6.5% at this moment. Those people have lost not only their income, but possibly their home and other basic needs, and they have most especially lost their relevancy. They are not needed. And they are most definitely not happy. Many Americans today feel adrift in a sea of negative news, with no coherent plan or leadership to provide confidence and direction. I believe the outgoing and incoming political leadership of this country need to work together to inspire confidence in the general population. I would urge them to do that now.

Larry McGee owns a Denver real estate brokerage.