Image via Wikipedia

I’m already sick of hearing about Ireland’s headlong nose-dive into recession. Between that and calamity in the world’s financial markets the doom mongers out there are having a field day.

Life as we know it is about to end apparently. Except of course that it probably isn’t. Nowhere near it, in fact.

I’ll stick my neck out here and make a shocking prediction: life for the vast majority of people in Ireland will carry on pretty much the same as before – through this recession and out the other side. Macro economic cycles come and go – and on one level, yes, they can change things pretty dramatically. But the fundamentals of life tend to stay pretty constant.

The challenges we face as a family with young children in Ireland today are, strangely enough, much the same challenges as we faced when the Celtic Tiger was in full roar. Recession or boom, families still have to juggle children, manage a household, cope with demanding jobs, make the mortgage payments, put three square meals a day on the table, cover childcare costs that are the most exorbitant in Europe, and a lot more besides. There’s always too much to do, and too little time. What’s changed?

Okay, if you’re a person who likes to splurge you may have to reign in your spending a bit, but is that really going to alter your life in any significant way? I was listening to a guest on a radio show this morning who’s recession busting plan was to stop getting her car valeted every Saturday morning. Hardly a life-changing sacrifice, is it?

Despite all the doom and gloom I suspect that for most of us life in economic recession will continue pretty much as usual. There might be a bit of belt-tightening going on… but is that such a bad thing?

As a nation we’ve been spending beyond our means for far too long, availing of the hefty credit being offered to us. Being forced to really think about what we choose to spend our money on, and training ourselves to only spend what we actually have might come as a bit of a shock to the system for some – but it’s a shock that’s long overdue.

There was a guy on a treadmill on the “Late Late Show” last Friday urging people to run for Africa. He put this recession obsession of ours into stark perspective when he pointed out that, compared to the people in east Africa he was raising money for, our concerns were pretty trivial.

Of course there will be people who are hit hard by the economic downturn, and the inevitable cuts and levies imposed by the government as they attempt to re-float a scuppered economy. The recession will bite hard for some, and that’s unfortunate. I don’t want to belittle their suffering, but the truth is that for the the majority it will be business as usual, recession or no.

I guess what it boils down to is that we worry too much – and I’m as guilty of this as anyone. We’re constantly dwelling on the past and fretting about the future, when for many of us the present really isn’t all that bad, if we’d only learn to pay it a bit more attention.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy is dead and its cubs are thinking of emigrating
• Ireland falls into recession
• Ireland leads eurozone into recession