“Rather than wait for government aid, we have to do it ourselves.”

This is a quote from a survivor, not of Hurricane Katrina or Sandy or even more recently the Sequester, but a survivor of Japan’s Tsunami that occurred 2 years ago. These days he could be anybody. He is still living in temporary housing in his island village off the coast of Japan after 2 years but he isn’t waiting on the government to help him get his and his fellow oystermen’s livelihoods back on track. Instead he went to the internet. There he found funding and help from many including Operation Blessing (.org), a nonprofit that helps people here and abroad. I don’t particularly like oysters but I like his quote and his spirit. And though I haven’t overcome and survived the kind of disaster he and many others have, there is something about his quote that spoke to me.

Then today I read that finally after four years of stop gap measures the Senate has passed a budget. Of course it won’t pass the Republican controlled House of Representatives but it has put an end to the government shutdowns that we were heading for at the end of this month (only days away, as usual). I think the word gridlocked (the current favored political descriptor) should be changed to constipated because our elected officials are having a hard time passing anything. In the article, the word Sequestration was unspoken like the name Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldermort. Instead of the name that must not be said it was the word that I couldn’t find anywhere. I am likening sequestration to global warming, is it or isn’t it?

Still there are a lot of people needing help here and feeling the pinch of governmental constipation. To those who have had their own disasters (credit card debt, old age, bad health, bad habits, joblessness, lack of savings) slowly sneak up on them and attempt to overwhelm them, I say, “Rather than wait for government aid, we have to do it ourselves.”