The economy's in a tailspin. Our financial system is reeling. And the government is showing its addiction to power games without much regard for what the people really want or need.

This is a crisis?

Not to me it isn't. Maybe it's because I was never enamored with any of them anyway.

After all, it was all built to perpetuate a system of fear, control and pursuit of self-interest at the expense of our principles and ideals, not to mention the greater good.

Maybe that's why I look at it as a good thing that their whole house of cards is threatening to come tumbling down. Because if it had been up to me, it would have come down a long time ago.

Understand, I'm not against money or power or getting for oneself. Rather, I'm for self-determination and the ability to go one's own way. When the deck is stacked in favor of those who make or manipulate the rules, that's difficult if not impossible.

Sure, it upsets me at the way all of them are acting. I want better from them, but I guess I should be thankful. They're just playing their role to accelerate the day when we can create a system that reflects love and kindness, not fear and control.

So I'm trying to see the current situation as serving us, helping to bring about conditions that will make us acutely aware of what we want from these critical underpinnings of our society.

Because what we're getting isn't it.

Perhaps you'd like to join me. When the news makes you want to yell out, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" maybe you'll then be grateful for this chance to finally know what you want and consider how you're going to get it.

I think most of us want an honest and responsive government that efficiently performs the tasks we allow it to. One that will make us proud to be Americans and inspire us to demonstrate our highest attributes.

Sure, there may be differences on how far that government should go, and the means by which it will act. But those are simply details we can work out later. First, we need to make them change their ways and work for us for a change instead of to perpetuate their silly power game of musical chairs played at our expense.

As for the money side of things, who wants to live in a world where getting money is a struggle, where there's never enough and we have to do things to get it that we find distasteful and unrewarding?

Moreover, living in an economic system built on usury just to get the means to try new ways to contribute to our our lives and world doesn't serve us very well, either. Perhaps we could begin to envision a new one, where capital to create is freely available and people are self-motivated to give their very best all the time.

Sure, there are a lot of other things we'll want in that new arrangement as well. But you get the picture. Fear, control, and greed won't be part of it.

Most of us want to leave those things behind. Maybe now we'll have our chance to move forward without them as we rise up from the rubble of the collapse of those things that don't serve us very well anyway.

The choice of how to see -- and respond -- to this "crisis" remains yours and yours alone. If it's been filling you with fear of the uncertainty over what lies ahead, perhaps you'll make another choice and embrace the changes that are coming.

The world ahead will be one of your creation. The question is, what do you really want it to look like when you're done? And what will you do to make it come out that way?