Again another shockingly cold morning for March in North Iowa. I likely wouldn’t have had an open house yesterday if I had known we were going to have such low temps with wind. One of the people who showed up at my open house is a person I’ve known for some years and a very soulful person. We have come to speak freely with each other thus we find ourselves talking about more than just real estate.
We equally shared concerns about how under-handed prosperity is accepted as well as tradespeople not standing behind work they’ve done. Decades ago people who did someone wrong in a bad way was not considered acceptable by the general public as well a the deed-doers peers. In these times, it seems society has become apathetic towards those that live on the credulity of others. I remember some years ago a woman commenting on some bad thing that happened to another woman who was duped into believing something that was not true. Her comment was, “Well, if she was stupid enough to believe it, then she deserved what she got.” I just about fell off my chair hearing that comment. The lack of compassion seems to be in vogue now because I’ve heard similar comments since then. We should look to the perpetrators to become negatively vocal about rather than the victims. It makes me sad to see how some of our industries have transformed themselves from being service oriented to mere profit makers. It seems to have infected many of the institutions we believed to be above it all such as the health care industry, the banking industry and the utilities.
One of my colleagues recently mentioned how hard it was growing up, but if it were not for the love, affection, and direction from his mother, he’s convinced he and his siblings would have never done as well as they did. Children need anchors as well as adults. There must be social re-enforcement in the standards that made our country great. If we do honest work for honest pay and stand behind our efforts, we will be yet another micro-American success story. Let’s all start recognizing the real face greed and just walk away from it because in the end, it’s not worth it. Many times greed is cloaked in the most delightful personification.
