Jack and the Beanstalk

             I've been thinking about what’s behind the disconnect between people today. Many folks I see believe they themselves are Jack, and instead of working the land and preparing for the earned harvest, they sit looking for the magic beans to sprout up overnight and fulfill their wishes.

            A lot of effort by someone else grows food, processes it and brings it to our local store so we can zap an instant meal in our microwave. Television advertisements display something daily we are sure to covet, don’t need and can’t afford. Bankers join in to “give” us instant credit—but at a price. The headline banner should read:

                                 Have all you want when you want it—no waiting!

        You and I, of course, see the fallacy in this belief system, but you probably have noticed the trend about to bury us all in debt. Right?

            Only in Fairyland do wishes come true spontaneously. A wealthy prince claims you as his bride, lotteries are won, rich uncles die and solve our worries. Foreigners by the drove come to our land to cash in on their dreams and wishes. Too few of us stop to think about the lessons handed down to us by the generation who sacrificed, risked their lives to give birth to our nation. They understood that it takes work and time to grow a nation just as work to grow a tree—preparation, planning, cooperation and continual hard work and careful maintenance for it to grow and thrive.

            From creating debt we may never be able to pay there is a natural-seeming progression to believing the world owes us and, just because we can’t afford something, it doesn’t mean we should go without something we really want. If we want it, we should have it. Why not? 

            The natural extension of these expectations is to think that other people who seemingly have plenty are required to share with us, letting us benefit effortlessly from their years of working and planning for their own families. Government should give us a free ride, we say—they’ve got money to spare. But that money was invested in our nation’s continued existence by taxpayers who worked for it. In a sense, when we stand with our hands out asking for gifts, we are walking uninvited into someone else’s house with our shopping basket on our arm. How is that different from the thief who enters with a gun? 

            Where the disconnect comes in is when folks without the drive to earn still want the plenty they see, without saving or working for it and begin to believe they have the “right” to demand things others have, others who have worked for it.

            There’s a pretty clear example in Exodus of the result of lack of faith and effort by a great nation of people, slaves freed by God and promised a land of their own if they would come and claim it. Miracles aplenty brought them to the edge of the Promised Land—daily food prepared—all they had to do was go out and pick it up. Somehow water was provided as they travelled the desert. Along the way they grew bored with the same basic food and whined for a feast and God sent them flocks of birds to eat. When they came to Canaan and saw its war-like residents, they were afraid to fight for the land, even after evidence of so many miracles in Egypt and the desert. That generation who refused to make the effort was barred from entry; the next generation were men of faith who believed their efforts would be rewarded—and they were.

            Along with fairy tales like Jack and his magic beans, some bits of truth came down through the years: Give a man a fish and he will eat one day; teach him to fish and he and his family will eat every day. And what about the proverbial ant and grasshopper? Some old ideas have not gone out of style; they just became unpopular for a time. Too bad for us.