Vital systems, from the U.S. economy to the global food market, are failing all at once... according to the "glass is half empty" crowd anyway. The "glass is half full of yummy lemonade" perspective is that we're merely going through some market corrections.

Quoth Howard Beale:

I don't have to tell you things are bad... everybody knows things are bad... it's a depression... everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job... the dollar buys a nickel's worth... banks are going bust... shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter...

It's hard to listen to the radio or watch television or whatever verb it is you do to blogs without noticing that several important systems are all falling apart. It's equally hard to maintain a cheery attitude without being accused of either having buried your head in the sand or being callous to the woes so real for so many people. If you'd like to be happy, and who wouldn't, I might suggest you embrace the concept of a market correction.

Financially speaking, a market correction is the sudden drop in a stock when a bunch of people simultaneously realize that it's overpriced. All those tips that had seemed really good as your brother-in-law was pitching you over beers wither to dust in your hands as people come to their senses and realizes that everyone was excited only because everyone else was excited, when there was no reason to get excited in the first place.

Getting more metaphorical, it's a way to maintain hope that an established system will ultimately regulate itself and that a short-term disaster doesn't threaten the underlying paradigm. It's a way to say, "Hey man, I know things seem pretty fucked up right now, but the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Despite any sarcastic tone, I think they're great.

Forests fires are market corrections, trading decaying oaks for nutrient-rich soil, thus ensuring the long-term life of the forest. Earthquakes are market corrections, drifting tectonic plates stuttering to catch up with one another to avoid gaping trenches of magma. When this planet finally kills off the humans to prevent more carbon from spilling into the atmosphere, it will be a market correction.

I can't help but feel optimistic, even giddy.

Perhaps you've sensed that something like this was coming for a while. Admit it, things have felt a little "wrong" lately. Your intuitive self sensed a deep cancer within the body of buying houses on interest-only loans and flipping them onto the next guy who does the same like a game of musical chairs. Well, now the music has stopped and we have a quiet moment of lucidity, when the lights have come on and—although startled at first—we look around and find joy in the way things could be, should be, and will be again.

If you've been frustrated about the "childbirth bubble" where expectant mothers are first given pain medication and then labor inducers, and then pain medication, and then labor inducers, until finally their's no choice but to perform a Caeserian, you'll be happy to know that there's a market correction going on.

If you've been irked by the "global food market bubble" making your food tasting bland, unsatisfying, and full of ingredients you can't pronounce, you'll be happy to know that eating local and urban farms are forcing a market correction.

If you think that the "partisan politics bubble" has made the national discourse too divisive, despite your sharing more and more values with your neighbors and that, "the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals." You probably already know that there's some markets getting corrected lately.

And if you think the "lists of links to lists of links bubble" has left the blogosphere a wasteland of search-engine optimized lists, Digg-bait headlines, and lifehacks distracting you from the life you're supposed to be hacking, you'll be pleased to find out that the Internet is receiving a long awaited market correction.

Yes, there are growing pains. Yes, the coming world will destroy the current one in its wake. But I have confidence that the turmoil we're seeing on the world stage is merely a generation of chickens coming home to roost, breaking some eggs, and tomorrow we'll all be eating some mighty tasty omelettes.