New Retirement Rules: Caught Between the Dow and the Tao

The current financial "reckoning" is causing large numbers of pre-retirees to seriously rethink their current and future lives. While these distressing times have caused many retirement dreams to shrink or even disappear altogether, they're also providing a much-needed social/financial/spiritual wake-up call.

There's an existential battle going on to create a better balance between the Dow and the Tao - between the material and the spiritual, work and play, spending and saving, now and tomorrow. Yes, these are tough times, but I think they are perceived to be so partly because we've had it pretty darn good for so long. Our grandparents and parents certainly endured tougher sledding than this. Nevertheless, dealing with today's problems is a challenge for all of us: to be hopeful when we've lost a lot of money and time; to be encouraging when friends and relatives need our help or have lost their jobs; to be positive when there's so much vitriol and negativity in the media.