I have a personal perspective on the psychological consequences of being caught in the crosshairs of a global economic meltdown. I was a small business owner during the 2008-2009 economic crisis. It was like standing in front of an avalanche and it didn’t make any difference which way I ran; there were no good options. And I was too small potatoes for any of the mover-and-shaker types to care about.
In many ways, being a small business owner in America has just been an extension of The Gig Economy, with many small business people insured through Medicaid and existing on a cash-flow basis, working 65 hours-a-week on the hope that it will all work out in the end.
In the psychological counseling world, they talk about losing the sense of self. In America, your identity is tied to your job status and in the years that followed when I said that I had to close my business because I could not find a buyer I certainly felt like people regarded me as a loser. Some of my identity went into exile.
I once was the guest for dinner in the home of a family who had been refugees from Burundi. They came to the United States after spending years in refugee camps. They literally were exiles.
I was welcomed into their home on a few acres of Iowa farm ground they were renting, working hard to develop a vegetable-growing business. I was struck how the flow of the evening and the setting was so reminiscent of the many evenings I had spent growing up on another farm in Iowa at another time.
It was a cold and rainy evening in early November. The main course was a hearty soup. A steaming, wobbling white orb of starch called Fufu, made by long, vigorous stirring of cassava flour and water, sat in the middle of the table and served a dual purpose; it not only occupied a large space in the stomach once eaten, but by tearing off a chunk of it and cradling it with the first three finger of your hand, it could then be used as a spoon by making an indentation with the thumb and ladling the soup from bowl to mouth. Very efficient, really, and quite filling.
Fufu is also known as Bugari and it carries an almost mystical significance to the identity of many people from Africa the same way every culture seems to have foods that trigger a deeply ingrained response. The daughter-in-law who made the bugari that night said,
“I could eat bugari every day. It makes my belly feel so full and makes me feel strong! A lot of people eat rice instead of bugari, but if I eat a lot of rice I just want to lie down and sleep. When I eat bugari I feel strong!”
After dinner, the father went outside to check on livestock and the mother, daughter, and daughter-in-law cleaned up, telling stories and joking while moving between the languages of Kirundi, Swahili, English and, sometimes, French. I’d lived that pattern myself many times growing up. Farming is farming.
It occurred to me that these exiles from central Africa were engaged in reinventing their conception of Home. They were keeping alive what traditions they could and reinventing Home on a few acres of farm ground that had once been Iowa prairie.
There will be a lot of people who experience trauma because of a crisis they did not cause. The myth that Americans like to tell themselves is that God is secretly picking the winners and losers and that he’ll do you a solid if you’re one of the people who try to pick themselves up by the bootstraps. When that doesn’t work – and it won’t for a lot of people through no fault of their own – their notion of who they are is going to be shaken. They will have to find a psychological place where they can reinvent Home.
I hope that this time around people who experienced loss because of this crisis will be viewed as still having value. That miserable profession known as Human Resources needs to actually regard humans as resources. Economic Development professionals need to pay attention to all those small business people who got suckered into paying their Chamber of Commerce dues with nothing to show for it.
I hope there will be real counselling help from real licensed professionals available and not just a bunch of Dr. Phil crap.
I hope people who have to reinvent Home can do it without building walls to keep out whatever scapegoats the demagogues gin up hatred for.
There are rewards to being open. I made a 15 minute film about a ceremony honoring the memory of a man who had been a refugee from Bhutan. He had been a farmer and entrepreneur who had to flee his homeland because the King of Bhutan ginned up ethnic hatred for people of Nepali heritage. After many years in a refugee camp, he and his family came to Des Moines, Iowa.
After his passing, his family dedicated a marble bench in front of the refugee center where he learned English and took citizenship classes. The bench sits at a public bus stop which will be used by other newly-arrived refugees for years to come. In the film, many people talk about how enriched their lives were by knowing this man despite barriers of language and culture. The man and his family reinvented Home and all the people who knew him were better for it.
Schmecken! 