It came unexpectedly. There you were, making your plans for the future. Sure, you had built up credit over a period of time and, maybe, taken out a loan or two based on a future that you had assumed would occur. You thought that growth would never end. You thought that, at the very minimum, things would stay, more or less, the same. That life would continue as it was or get better.

The future was bright and shiny.

After all, you had made such an investment over the years. From both sides. Both sides had made that investment. Sometimes it had been a bit rocky. Unexpected events meant some periods of difficulty. But still you had the credit built up over the years. Trust was the key. And you would invest your time and energy to pay back the loan required in difficult times. And it worked.

And then, with no warning, it all collapses and it vanishes into the air like a mist being swept away by the wind and you realise that it wasn’t real after all. The assumptions were wrong. The hard cash wasn’t actually real. The credit line dried up. The assets from the past became worthless – as if they were nothing: had never existed.

So what did you work for all those years if now nothing is worth the paper it is written on? The struggles of the past became the thing that had trapped you.

And how do you reconcile it all now? How can you move forward when you don’t know what IS real? How do you value something that doesn’t seem to have held its value?

I just wish I was talking about the credit crunch.