In 2007, just about 10 days shy of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I had a situation with my heart that required me to visit my cardiologist. After doing the required number of tests, he very somberly told me that I needed to have an angioplasty done. At the back of my mind, I knew that our children were planning a celebration of sorts for our silver wedding anniversary. So I asked him, "Is there any way that I can postpone this? Our children are planning our anniversary celebration and we'd like to be a part of that." I will never forget his reply. He said, "Dr. Clements, I'm really not concerned with your silver anniversary." I looked at him in surprise, shock actually. Then he continued, "What I'm looking at is to really get you ready for your golden anniversary." I took a deep breath and said, "Okay doc, we'll do it your way."
I haven't forgotten that because I was facing a man who was not ready to do a quick fix and to get an immediate solution so that I could have some kind of gratification in a short-term solution when really a major intervention was necessary. Quick fixes are something that we use a lot of the time. The dictionary meaning of 'quick fix' is an expedient, temporary solution that merely postpones having to cope with the overall problem. We do that so often because sometimes the immediate is what we want to do as it satisfies the popular conditions or expectations of people around us. Yet, it always never truly does what it's expected to do. A Band-Aid instead of surgery can never actually fulfill the real solution.
I read an article on Dwight Eisenhower's farewell message to the American people as he was laying down his Presidency. He kind of talks about that. He says, "Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties." How very true! When we think about our own lives too, and the situations that we face, we often find that we too err on the side of the temporary rather than the permanent solution.
What motivates a quick fix?
· Sometimes, it's just taking the easy way out.
· It could be that we are looking for a temporary gain rather than a permanent solution.
· It could be that we are responding to a popular, rather than a right solution. We are doing the popular thing rather than the right thing.
I've been reading Raghuram Rajan's book, 'Fault Lines'. Raghuram Rajan, as you know, was the winner of the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year in 2010 for the same book. He had delivered a speech many years ago and was kind of chastised for it by many sections that thought that he was creating a crisis moment, when in fact, he was one of the few sane voices that had spoken about an impending recession in 2007. He said, "One of the things that happened was trying to initiate a quick fix. There was a rising inequality and the push for housing credit that was one of the fault lines that caused this problem. Income inequality in the United States was huge and political pressure was created for easy credit, rather than fixing the problem." He went on to say in his book Fault Lines, "The top 1% of households accounted for only 8.9% of income in 1976. This share grew to 23.5% of the total income generated in the United States in 2007." Put differently, "Of every dollar of real income growth that was generated between 1976 and 2007, 58 cents went to the top 1% of households. In 2007, the hedge fund manager John Paulson earned $3.7 billion, about 74,000 times the median household income in the United States."
So basically, what he was saying was that the wages of workers in the 90th percentile, or the wage distribution in the United States for office managers, had grown much faster than the wage of the 50th percentile worker, which was the median worker, or the typical factory worker. This differential was creating a huge problem – one of the reasons was lack of education. While previously a high-school diploma was okay to get a job, it was no longer okay in the 1980s and 1990s. But education hadn't kept up with the requirements of the labor force. But politicians, while knowing that this was a problem, decided not to meet or engage with the education problems. Instead, they started to give soft loans to this median group, thinking that if this worker group could afford to buy a new car or go on an occasional holiday, they would just think that everything was ok. But, it really all came crumbling down.
The quick fix never actually works. While it may give us some kind of temporary relief and just a small little high, it doesn't, in any way, help us in the long run. Thinking about that, I decided to throw that out to you today, looking at different areas where a quick fix is being used by us when in fact, a permanent solution is what is being called for. I wonder whether there are some of you listening, or will read this post, who have health issues like I did, and are using a quick fix rather than a permanent solution. Maybe today, the real answer to your problem is not the quick fix.
Or maybe it could be an opposite situation where you know that there needs to be a permanent solution, but everybody around you seems to be pushing for a soft solution, something that is a quick fix. You know that it is not the right way and you are wondering whether you should speak out or not. I wonder whether today, the nudge will be for you to take a stand on the permanent solution.
Or I wonder whether there could be a family crisis, and you know that there are deeper relational issues that are going on at home between your spouse, your children, parents; and what you are offering are just quick fixes when a really more viable permanent solution is required. I don't know where you are today, but I hope that the solution that you will pick will be the permanent one. Band Aids never suffice where surgery is needed.
How do we know what to do? I always rely on the fact that the Almighty God gives us the wisdom. He says in His Word, "If anyone lacks wisdom, ask of Me and I will give." So my prayer for each one is that we will know the different areas of our lives where we are using quick fixes rather than taking the time for permanent solutions. May God help each one of us to fix it -- permanently.
May I pray with you? Almighty God, bless each one of us on this call. Help us to look for the permanent solutions rather than the fleeting quick fixes that continuously pop up in our vision. Help us to look at the long haul and to make sure that we are doing what is required and necessary rather than what is expedient and maybe even popular. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen.
• Leslie H Gelb, "The Ike Speech that Eclipses JFK," http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/17/dwight-eisenhowers-farewell-address-why-it-matters-more-than-jfks-inaugural.html?source=dictionary
• Raghuram G. Rajan, "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy." Pages 9-11, HarperCollins Publishers.
No comments:
Post a Comment