It just continues... Even since I first posted this thread, so much has changed. My own workplace has locked doors and will not let anyone in until they call and respond to screening questions. In another day or two, I will be working from home and no longer at the workplace. I am grateful to be in the employment sector I am in, as I can continue to work and get paid. So many other businesses have been instructed to close and I feel deeply for those employees who won't be getting an income during this closure.
My retirement account has taken a 3-year hit, in that I am now in the same place I was back in 2017. However I am still staying with the strategy of relying on the fact I still have several years before I retire and that it would be foolish to "lock in" my losses right now by transferring to a fixed rate fund. When things started to fall, I thought others were foolish to have gotten out when things were low, but as I watched my own retirement continue to disintegrate, I have to admit I wish I had gotten out when my losses would have been small.
But, truthfully, the stock market and my retirement account is small potatoes when it comes to the seriousness of what is going on. Even if I lost everything financially, there is much more important things in life. When I was a child, my family lost our farm due to two natural disasters that occurred within the space of one year.
ONE YEAR!
What my father had spent a lifetime building and placed his own inheritance working toward, was lost in floods and fire in a matter of a few months time. It was a lesson I will never forget. I remember the thought that I had as I slept in my upstairs bed, listening to five or six feet of water moving in the downstairs below, that what mattered most was not the material things in life. If you place all of your happiness on material and tangible things, you might build up an empire and be the most famous or successful of persons, but none of that matters when the great equalizers of fire, floods, typhoons, hurricanes, or disease comes knocking.
Far better is it to have the factors of your own "success", based in friendships, family, loved ones, and relationships and memories you have experienced in life. Your fortune and success can be taken away in a breathe or a second, but the memories and experiences of life you have had cannot be erased.
I hope we all can remember these things and be here to help each other.
postscript... Among all this chaos, I am fortunate and blessed to everyday be reminded of the miracles and see the renewal of life. Each day I get to see the newborn calves and experience how mother nature continues, despite the challenges and otherwise negative aspects of disease and death. It is all part of a bigger thing than any of us individually may realize.
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