Recently I saw an interview with Rush Limbaugh. I know, I know but hear me out. Throughout the course of the interview Rush was his normal cuddly, narrow minded fool blabbering on about some gibberish that I was just about to turn off when he made a statement that got me. He said (now I’m paraphrasing here)_….”I know there’s a recession, I just don’t choose to participate”…..and I have to say that this may be the first time I can ever say – I AGREE WITH OUR BOY RUSH. Amen! Let’s not participate.
I’m sure Rush didn’t mean it the way I’m going to interpret here – but I don’t really care. I choose not to participate in the gloom and doom. I choose to see the silver lining. I choose to be happy. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I’m grateful for my lovely wife Laura, my perfect baby girl Talia, for my friends, my family and my job. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I don’t chose to participate.
You shouldn’t either. Smile, you’ll live longer. I promise.
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Christopher Dessi 
While it’s great to hear you so upbeat, you may wish to sober your tone or take in some perspective.
This past month saw Caterpillar slashing 20,000 jobs; Microsoft with first ever layoffs of 5,000 in 30 years; IBM slashing 2,800; Texas Instruments 3,400; Wyeth & Pfizer expecting 19,500 job cuts; Sprint cutting 8,000 jobs; Home Depot cutting 7,000 jobs; GM axing 2,000 (initially); and even the mighty Google laying off 5,000 temporary workers just to name a few.
The US economy has lost 2.55 million jobs since this recession began. Worldwide estimates are around 51 million lost jobs by the end of this year.
So choosing not to participate and to “smile” may be a bit difficult for 51 million people.
I think maybe I didn’t do a good job of properly expressing my point. Sometimes the loss of a job is the beginning of something great for people – ie, a new career, additional schooling, or starting over in a new city etc. What I’ve attempted to do is to offer some distance from all of the bad news and offer perspective that if you have your health, your family and friends you’ll be ok. You may lose your home, or your car, but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Dwelling on the negativity is counter productive. I’m sure people realize how bad things are, but if that’s all people think about, then we’re stuck. People need to refocus their energy on the good things in life, continue to charge forward, and not get stuck in the muck of bad news.