Unless you’re living in a remote part of the world, with no access to radio or television or the internet, like many of us, the recent economic bailout by the US government is one of the top ten things you’re thinking/talking about today. Plenty of people have plenty of things to say about it, and not all of it is good. Certainly, the math is disturbing. Certainly, the whole situation gives one pause. Where is this money coming from, anyway? And what will it mean to the value of the dollar, not to mention the economic future of the United States? If you’re like me, you’re just a bit concerned about America’s collective financial future (to put it lightly), and you’re wondering if there’s going to be any light at the end of this tunnel before we pay the piper for bad decisions.

Yes, bad decisions. Bad infomation. Bad intentions. Bad numbers. Bad math. Bad, bad, bad… Most people can figure out how to lay blame squarely on someone’s shoulders — the bankers (easy targets that they are, not that they’ve ever been the most popular folks at the high school dance, to begin with)… the greedy Gordon Gecko-esque stock brokers who convinced themselves (and a lot of us) in the 80’s, that “greed is good”… the predatory lenders who wrote all those loans to people who didn’t draw the right conclusions (if they drew any, at all) from their loan documents… the people who bought the houses they did/did not know they couldn’t afford… the departure from the gold standard… the change in laws which allowed banks to claim full credit for loans that were only partially paid up… the push towards taking out second mortgages on houses to pay off credit cards which never really went away, but (after the debt was zeroed out by the “home equity loan” — a second mortgage) started loading up on more charges, in addition to the home loan…

There are oh, so many ways to figure out how this went wrong. And there are oh, so many ways to assign blame. And in many cases, whichever way you point, you’d be right. At least partly.

I, personally, am quite relieved this financial meltdown is happening. People have been warning about it for years, even decades. There are various economic models that predict this sort of thing happening, and people have been ignoring the cautionary predictions for years and years. Finally, the rubber has hit the road, and the truth is coming to the surface. It’s painful, yes, and a lot of people are getting hurt, and even more people are having the living daylights scared out of them. But to me (even though I myself am feeling some pressure), this seems like a good and natural part of a fundamentally flawed process that needs drastic overhauling… and wasn’t going to get drastically overhauled, so long as anything was working properly, at all.

Now everything seems to be falling apart, and the end (of something) seems near. Certainly, things can get worse. They can get a whole lot worse. Any number of terrible things could happen. We could all be turned out of house and home. We could all lose our cars and our jobs and our relationships and our material security, such that it is. We could end up in a “Greater Depression” or be bought by China. We could be bought by someone who we don’t think is our friend, but has more money than we do, and can help us subsidize our material habits. Or we could all divest of our involvement with money, period, and go do something else. Like farm. Or hobo around the western states in boxcars. (I’m only being partly facetious — I know people who would prefer the last option to financial servitude to any foreign power.)

But let’s remember, if nothing else, financial cycles and economics are cyclical in nature. And while money seems to be disappearing or being diluted or losing value, or what have you, the fact of the matter is, the value that’s in it isn’t really going away — it’s just shifting and changing and moving.

Case in point from my own life:

Back in 1987, when we had that “adjustment” to our economy and Black Friday happened, I was living in northern New Jersey, near one of the richest, most affluent towns in the United States. Going for my morning walk, one day, I saw more than one BMW with a hand-drawn “For Sale” sign in the window. And on the news, Drexel Burhnam Lambert had just laid off 600 or so employees, just out of the blue. It was the biggest news of the day — a supposedly strong Wall Street firm was letting people go, just like that. People were stunned. Shocked. Horrified. Taken completely by surprise. If this could happen at  Drexel… what’s next?

That was one of the first dominoes to go down that I remember from that time. Drexel hitting hard times. On its way out. Oh no! It was a “signature wound” of that time, and watching the news interviews with the abruptly displaced Drexel employees left a deep impression on me. The fear. The worry. The shock. Everyone’s worst nightmare — a job with one of the best, supposedly safest companies you can ask for… just going away. I worried that it might happen to me, oneday. At the time, I didn’t realize I’d eventually be moving into financial services, and if I had, I might have reconsidered my career path.

Let’s fast-forward to 1989 or 90… I’ve moved from the New York metropolitan area to Center City Philadelphia, and I’m going through massive life changes. I mean, real life changes. As in, leaving a marriage – literally walking out with nothing more than a bag of clothing, the promise of a friend that I could crash at her place if I ever left my ex-husband, and a day job as a legal secretary for a safety net. I was out on my own, muddling through getting on my feet, sometimes not having two pennies to rub together, and not being able to hold down a full-time job because of chronic health issues. I had rent to pay, as well as bills and a student loan, and I had to put food on my table. I was temping my way around the Philadelphia law firm scene, moving from one assignment to another, taking work where I could find it. I was fortunate to be on my own, really, because if I’d had anyone else to support, I would have been in real trouble.

At the time, I was blissfully unaware of how close to the edge I was living. Work was regular, but it was never guaranteed. I was just going day-to-day, dealing with health issues, trying to get my divorce papers moved through, just going through the paces of getting back on my feet, practically and emotionally, after what had been years of less-than-optimal treatment by my former spouse. I was also on medication for chronic pain that had, as a side-effect, malaise and short-term memory loss. Since I was temping, I was often “floating” — being assigned to one attorney, one day, when his/her secretary was out… then being assigned to another on another day. Moving from one floor to the next, from day to day, changing duties, shifting locations in the building, never being at the same desk more than a day or two in a row… it was all getting to be a little much.  What I really needed was a steady gig that didn’t have me moving around from place to place, and that could guarantee me steady work for more than a day or two.

Lo and behold, the HR department asked me if I’d be willing to put in two weeks working for an attorney whose secretary had quit. They couldn’t find anyone else to work for him, because he had a somewhat aggressive, abrasive personality and the secretaries were generally afraid of him. But he was an important figure at the firm, and they had to find someone to fill in for two weeks while they searched for a replacement. Well, I didn’t know him from Adam, and I figured that I could do just about anything for two weeks… plus, I needed something at least moderately stable and predictable, so I said, “Sure.”

Well, it turned out that this attorney was one of the members of the team that was carving up Drexel Burnham Lambert… dividing the spoils and distributing them wherever it seemed like they should go. I don’t remember much about the job — and if I did, I couldn’t tell you, because it’s all very confidential. But what I can tell you is that a whole lot of hours were being billed and a whole lot of money was changing hands, in the aftermath of this collapse. And where certain people had lost, others had gained. Where certain jobs were dissolved, others were created. Drexel may have ceased to exist in its former incarnation, but it was still a huge money-maker, for the people who knew where to look for the money.

And I was one of the people that benefited — a poor itinerant legal secretary living on the edge, who was able to introduce some rare predictability into a too-exciting life, and settle into just doing my job, paying my bills, and catching my breath. I didn’t get financially rich off the experience, but I was enriched in other ways. Ways that counted perhaps even more than money.

That’s the lesson I come away with — that currency, as devalued as it may be, as diluted as it may become — never really goes away. It just changes places and forms and flows in different directions. Money may be scarce for some, but I’d bet the farm (if I owned a farm) that it’s in great abundance for others. And no, I don’t necessarily believe that it’s only in abundance for the few who have access to power and connections and influence. I believe money is in abundance for anyone and everyone who knows where to look, who makes a priority of finding it, and who uses their noggin when they deal with it.

While some say that this whole bailout deal is a way for the rich to raid the coffers of the middle class and push them out of the action, I think there’s more to it than that. Personally, I have a really hard time believing that any one group of people has the market cornered on material wealth, and that just because you belong to a certain class, you’re destined to a certain financial future and/or you’re at the mercy of others from a different class. I think that’s a cynical and half-hearted approach to what is admittedly a difficult subject for many: money and how we deal with it.

And I think this bailout situation (and the world’s financial woes) offers us the opportunity to face up to this difficult subject, both collectively and individually, and see where we’ve taken a turn that leads us in a different direction than the one we want to take, deep down inside. It offers us the chance to take a long, hard look at our patterns on small and large scales, and develop new ways of relating to our money, our world, and yes, our bankers and stock brokers (who, after all, are people, too). It gives us the chance to admit that yes, we are human, that we make mistakes, and that our choices have consequences, and yes, Mom was right when she warned us against running up our Visa and MasterCard and Discover and AmEx… and then neglecting to pay our bills on time.

As painful as this is — and it is painful! — this bailout is a boon in disguise. It gives us the chance to see where we’ve gone wrong, where we’ve gotten off-track, and it gives us the chance to ask ourselves, “Do we really need all this stuff, after all?” Is it absolutely necessary for the United States to hinge its identity on consumption? Or is there something more to life that we can enjoy — that doesn’t incur a 23.9% APR? Do we have to buy a new car every two years, or will the one we have in the driveway do quite nicely? Must we define our identities by what material goods we own, what bling we flash, what clothes we wear, what zip code we have? It gives us a chance to re-examine what truly makes us rich, what truly gives value and meaning to our lives, what truly sustains us, and will save our asses.

It forces us to re-examine our definition of “wealth” and “security” and take stock of what matters most to us. It teaches us to look for what really makes life worth living.

And that can’t be all bad.