Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
-Marianne Williamson

Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses an exaggerated or extravagant statement to create a strong emotional response. As a figure of speech, it is not intended to be taken literally.
-EnglishClub.com

In a recent edition of Media Reviews, Bob Veres said that I was "surely engaging in hyperbole" when I wrote that "the current financial crisis is quite possibly humanity's most serious challenge ever." With his usual charm, Bob implied that such a contention was over the top and proceeded to name four other contenders for this honor. He missed the point.

The current financial crisis is both a challenge and opportunity for the financial planning profession. This is about "playing big," both as individuals and professionals. It is an engraved invitation to step up and help people successfully emerge from this money mess.

Of course my statement was "hyperbole." Duh. Hyperbole is a wonderful, useful and viable writing device. Because even though my assertion about the enormity of the challenge wasn't self-evident, the matter is at least up for debate. And these money challenges belong to financial planners, those manning the wheelhouses and steering the ship when folks ask us to deal with their financial futures.

These are times when fear abounds. Our descendents might look back at them and see a major inflection point in history. Our world may be changing and, most likely, will never again be what we have thought it was. Notwithstanding Jeremy Siegel's charts, we may not revert to a mean.

When we mess with money as we have been, the effects ripple infinitely and eternally throughout lives and cultures. Since we have built our lives and our social units on these very same messy financial structures, could the importance of these issues really be exaggerated?

Indeed, Brother Bob points out other more serious challenges that have beset mankind throughout history to put the crisis in perspective, things such as the Black Death, two world wars and nuclear brinksmanship. We know how three out of four turned out. They weren't pretty. There were lots of bodies and the world's orders were turned inside out. Nuclear bombs are still around, of course, and if one blows up, the result could likely be the same. Epidemics, wars and self-destruction are some mighty nasty cohorts. They suggest the seriousness of our times and our work. But that was the point.

Accordingly, the times call for all of us to take responsibility about money. Financial advisors will have to help other folks navigate. When President Obama talks about the need for everyone to take on individual responsibility, what do you think he's talking about? He's talking about exactly the kind of work that real financial planners do. He is talking about citizens making their best possible financial decisions, and he knows they need help. He is talking about this country using its financial resources more responsibly and effectively. This will require understanding, craft and wisdom. This will require CFP practitioners.

For now, we don't know how this money mess will resolve itself. It could get mighty ugly. But financial advisors must be part of the solution by stepping up.

It is important to remind the community we work with of something vital and profound. We are not in the "more" business, we are in the "relationships with money" business. So as we move money to the center of our conversations, we have to question our proper functions. (Am I the only one that thinks we put too much emphasis on money management and its attendant details? How well did that work for us when everything hit the fan?)

Using hyperbole to talk about our professional destiny is no crime. Thinking small in the face of our many problems is no virtue. The world needs us to show up as best we can. It's easy to play small, but small isn't going to cut it. People are hurting. People have lost jobs and equity. They thought their lives were under control. They were wrong. Businesses, portfolios and personal lives are imploding.

People are discovering that money cannot be relied on for long-term security. Even the pursuit of "enough" money is chimerical. Responsible people who have spent decades developing sound savings habits have gotten clobbered.

The less responsible people, those who have followed bad habits and self-indulgence, have seen chickens coming home to roost so big they seem to have ingested steroids.  Unprecedented social and individual demands are being placed on money. If today is bad, what about those unfunded promises/liabilities for tomorrow?

This financial crisis is big. It cannot be dismissed by jokes and mockery. It is going to take understanding and adaptability. Somebody needs to help the folks understand. Somebody needs to help people think this through creatively, courageously and constructively, the somebody being the CFP practitioner. If not us, who?

Obviously, the financial services industry has abandoned its claims to any sort of moral standing. Who could trust
it or its $88,000 carpets? Sales organizations turned their backs on the public's health, safety and welfare with derivatives, subprime, arrogance and self-indulgence. Now the courts have told them that real advisors must make disclosures.

Who is left that can be trusted is us-and that is real, not hyperbole. Who is left is a group of people that have moved toward increasing accountability, acceptance of fiduciary standards, dedication to client service. They look into the future to understand what people's demands will be. "Stepping up" is how we roll.

It is time for financial planners to fully grasp our essential intangible. It is time to grow up, play big and see ourselves on a world stage. As Marianne Williamson said, your playing small does not serve the world. (Can I get an "amen"?)

Yet we continue to dither with trivia. We continue to spend our energy fiddling with trifling details and middling gimmicks while ignoring big picture issues that touch everybody's lives.

Have we grasped the role that money plays in our culture? I think not. Do we understand it? Again, I think not. Not me. Not you. Not Fed chairs, Treasury secretaries, hedge fund managers, the late, great sub-species known as investment bankers or mutual fund managers. Try thinking about our current money dependency in terms of history. The reliance on money instead of people for most social and physical infrastructure is essentially a post-Civil War phenomenon-less than 150 years old, a mere flick of time.

We now have to retrace our fundamental assumptions. Do we have it right in terms of investments, AUM and financial product? Or do we need to take fresh looks? I would go with the latter.

Financial planning got its start within the world of financial products. Its critical breakthrough was when it began to address the need for different financial products from a human's perspective, not from each financial sector's.

In the past 40 years, we have seen new issues arise with the cultural transformations and makeovers in the financial services industries-and have not adapted. For many of us, it is as if physicians had stopped exploring issues of human health after learning to set bones and treat fevers. There seems to be so much worthy of more exploration.

Having long contended that financial planning is "the ultimate liberal arts profession," and a natural "learned profession," I suggest that we not operate in isolation. At a time of unprecedented crisis we must understand money liberally from the inside out, then integrate different subjects into financial planning's garden of knowledge.

This means understanding the humanities, especially history, religion and literature; the social sciences, especially economics, sociology and psychology; the physical sciences, including geology, biology, medicine, chemistry and physics; as well as business and governance and the built environment. All of these are of vital importance for understanding money and our relationship with it.

Unfortunately, there is almost no interface between academia and the financial planning profession. As near as I can tell, those teaching financial planning courses on college campuses have little to do with practicing financial planners. They do not present at our gatherings, or even attend them.

Real professions have strong ties with their academics. They have synergy. They also examine themselves, warts and all. Maybe we have to do that. Are we really "wealth managers" or "investment managers"? Are we really just in the "rate of return" business? Do we just serve a wealthy elite?

Or do we serve an elegant social fabric, helping human beings live lives better than the one described by Hobbes: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"? Do we instead help people live and make decisions for wealth building and prosperity, even in times of messy money?

Hyperbole? Maybe. So what? Financial planners should aspire to playing big.