The Handshake & The Family

This post will lack the pictures and videos which have become standard to this blog - in part because Megan has the camera and is away for the weekend, and part because I've had two things on my mind.

The first has to do with the handshake. Now I must say that I've tried writing my thoughts regarding this topic several times and each time I sit down to write I'm not sure how to convey my thoughts, so I've come to the conclusion that I will write and that will be that. At the end of February I went to an International Council of Shopping Centers ("ICSC") Conference in Chicago for work. (The basics: It is a gathering of retailers, developers and municipalities who discuss market trends and try to make 'deals' happen). So I had this opportunity to learn about the private sector as well as public/private partnerships. And in a separate presentation given by several private sector people several key words were said which caught my attention: Strong Language, Penalties, Clawbacks. When the lawyer presented these ideas she referred to the public sector needing to instill these tactics in agreements made with private sector companies. The 'strong language' is what first caught my ear and made me wonder what happened to The Handshake; to making an agreement, putting in the hard work and keeping your word? The presenter continued by saying that penalties and clawbacks must be written into all contracts to not only cover the contractee but inflict damage upon the contractor if ALL terms are not met, regardless of if the job is completed and both parties come out ahead. It made me think about lawyers and law, in development in particular, shows that people don't trust each other; that selfishness runs high when money and development is involved. It saddened me to hear that we need 'strong language' to protect ourselves. What has happened to social, business, personal ethics? What has happened to love; to wanting what is best for not only ourselves but our neighbors too.

My second thought regarding The Family came at the same conference when it was mentioned how much money Chicagoland alone spends each on stuff. $100,000,000,000.00 Yeah that's One Hundred (100) Billion Dollars each year on STUFF! Our expensive lifestyle don't allow us to have a family with just one parent working. To support our homes, TV, iP_ds, cars, video games, dining habits, fancy clothes and every other kind of material item not increasing our love for others. After taking a closer look at our life I've realized Megan and I too could cut back on the frivolities of life and get back to quality time and cheap fun with family. Leave the material things behind and love. That's my simple thought, if we scale our life back to the bare necessities - Faith, Hope, Love - we'll find our lifestyles to be more lavish than they ever could be.

Our society needs to ask, especially in the economic market, what it can do to love, because that is what will hold us all together, not what it can do to isolate friends and family. That's my thought on the topic. Maybe not the most eloquently stated but its been on my mind and is now off.