Friday, November 30, 2007

Utah's Depressed. I'm not surprised.

So, we read in the papers that Utah is the most depressed state in the nation.

And we're all running around like this is new.

The running joke for years has been that Utah County is called Happy Valley because there's Prozac in the drinking water. That joked stemmed from a report many years ago that said that Utah County leads the nation in prescriptions for Prozac.

Whether that's true or not is beside the point.

The fact is, we deal with some unique issues in this state. And in this, I'm blaming Mormons.

Not the Church, but some members of it. Actually, most members of it, in Utah at least.

You see, we tend to have this real keeping-up with the Joneses mentality. We see this perfect little family on the pew in front of us in Sacrament meeting, and we wonder why our family isn't like that. Or, we see the happily-married newlyweds off in the corner of the Chapel, and we're upset that we're not that happy.

But we forget that we are seeing the best 3 hours of the week for these people, and not the rest of the week, where things go equally wrong for Sister Perfect as they do for the rest of us.

Or we see Brother K buy a sailboat, and you want a sailboat. Who cares if you can't afford the sailboat, prefect families buy sailboats. So, you go into further debt to buy yourself a sailboat. This puts further strain on your family budget, and further strain on you family as well.

-Bob

3 comments:

Shaun said...

Umm... Not to go proving your point or anything, but brother K borrowed $2000 for that sailboat...

While many people only see brother K having fun with his boat, there are few who remember that everything has a cost.

The boat came with the cost of being in debt longer. What costs are we not considering when we see others with nice things we wish we could get?

Bob said...

Yes, but brother K is also potentially in better financial shape than others to incur said debt.

Assuming, of course, that Brother K is a real person....

-Bob

Anonymous said...

Your thoughts on this subject are, well, depressing.....