During one of my enthralling excursions to South Campus, I happened to be passing by one of our many construction sites when I noticed bags of sand appropriately titled “Play Sand.” While I don’t doubt the need to sell sand, it struck me as odd because it was just one of those things that I never imagined being sold.
Obviously I was na’ve, and obviously it must be sold somewhere. But in my life, sand has always just been… there. The sand was in the sandbox, and there was nothing more to it.
But of course, everything must be manufactured and prearranged and corporationalisized (don’t look that up – it’s not a real word). A quick Google search shows that there are several companies that bag and ship sand and that it’s probably not as wild of an idea as I first thought. The point is, though, that somewhere out there, somebody’s father or cousin or sister or uncle works in the sand business for a living. Sand is a full-fledged industry.
It’s not that I’ve suddenly realized that some jobs are less thrilling than others – I knew that already. My mom is an accountant – tax day is like the freakin’ Fourth of July at my house. But instead, I think of this as a sort of economic epiphany: Given the fabulous state of our economy, what happens when the only companies that sell sand suddenly go out of business after sandboxes become an unnecessary playground expense?
Sand is great and all (especially when it’s being used at a campus where there are more things under construction than there are things), but who will sell it if the current market gives out? Use this as an allegory for other consumer products, like coffee or magazines.
When everything looks like it’s failing – Starbucks profits are down 97 percent, Vogue’s ad sales are going to hell and General Motors is being used in the same sentence as the word “bankruptcy” – pretty soon it might be time for some big new corporation to take the spot that these high-profile companies used to hold.
Somewhere out there is a coffee shop that will displace the angel-queen-fish thing that is the Starbucks logo, or a start-up magazine that will be the next Vogue or even a small sand-bagging company that will replace the ones that do the dirty work now.
I can only hope that as college students – especially Northwestern students – we will be the next CEOs and senior executives of the currently small firms that will replace the collapsing Goliaths of the corporate world if and when this economic crisis ends. They’ll rise up out of the woodwork and become just as commonplace as the brand names we know now (and yes, I’m aware that there’s more to the economy than magazines and coffee).
But back to the sand. There is a market for everything, and when one fails, there is often success for another. Whether you plan to jump at the opportunity to be the next home mortgage firm or the next great playground sand distributor, it’s time to realize that this economic crisis might have an upside if we look to the future instead of the present. Every good economic investment requires a leap of faith. In this case, it just might call for a leap into the sandbox.
