It's Tuesday: It's Not Time Off, and Not Entirely On - Issue #60
This is one of those weeks where the dividing line between work and personal life is extremely thin. A number of unavoidable but poorly timed family illnesses and crisis have taken up a lot of my brain space. And, of course, a slew of completely unrelated work demands have popped up at the same time and demand an enormous amount of professional attention. I am behind on my readings about the world of magazines and publishing. I can even confess to hitting the delete key on emails and newsletters that didn't come from my clients this past week.
But I did have some thoughts about all of the craziness we’ve seen recently and how that seems to intersect with my own experiences. If that sponsors a conversation, well, yay! If you feel like returning the favor and hitting the delete key right about now... OK then. I won’t take it personally.
Friends, Family, Loans, Taxes & Death
I still have a visceral memory of that moment in my life when it dawned on me that there were people who actively did not like me. I was in the third grade and perhaps a bit late in life to realize that sort of thing. In my defense, pint sized me was very small, very dreamy and lived deep in my books and my own story writing. The world outside of my small circle of friends and neighbors was not something I thought much about. These guys didn’t like me? How could that be? What did I do to deserve that?
As it turned out, merely existing was quite enough for them. Those boys spent the next three years making sure I was aware of how much they didn’t like me. My parents response was well meaning but very on point for their generation. “Life’s not fair’ they said. “Pull up your socks and deal. We did and so can you.” And I suppose I did, but probably only about as well as a small, skinny, bespectacled boy to whom Narnia and Stuart Little and Charlotte seemed more real than Washington Elementary School did. I ran for home. A lot.
Life is not fair. Deal.
I’ve been thinking about life and fairness quite a bit the past week or so. Sarcastic me finds the whole concept amusing. But I admit that the sarcasm is getting tiresome.
Last week I saw a lot of people get traction and visibility over the debate about student loan deferments and forgiveness. We’ve seen so many politicians and “people on the street” declare, “I paid mine off, why should I pay yours off too?”
Look, that’s a fair question and I guess where you stand on the issue would depend on your definition of what is fair and what is not. How far back do you want to look? How deep do you want to go? What sort of timeline are you thinking of?
I was fortunate to be born a straight white male in the 1960’s. I sauntered into college just before the Reagan revolution and managed a few years of college before the rules were changed to make student loans more expensive. So I was able to have mine almost all paid off by the time I was married and then used a little bit of our wedding money to polish it all off. Had I been born 10 years later? They probably wouldn’t have been paid off until I was into my 40’s and panicking over how I’d pay for our kids to go to college.
So my experience was quite different from someone who went to college in this century. Why should I begrudge them a windfall? Why would I want them so suffer? Don't I want them to have the same kind of opportunities I had? Who said this all has to be a zero-sum game?
Life Is Not Fair
But that does not mean that life has to be terrible does it?
And that’s been one of the mysteries of my adult life. I don’t understand people who seem to thrive on punitive actions that make it harder for others. Why did we make our lives so car dependent? Why are we banning books? Why can’t people get paid time off to care for their children, their ill relatives, their aging parents? Why do we pay so much for our healthcare, but get so little actual health care? Why did we allow the politicians to take away our pensions and replace them with 401Ks, IRAs, and a host of thick, impenetrable rules that seem to make retirement that much more complex?
Why do the leaders who crash the companies we work for get to walk away with big pay days? And if so, why do the account executives and warehouse workers get a pittance by comparison? Why do some people have to live next to a landfill while others can write rules that keeps the landfill out of their neighborhoods?
Is this really what life is supposed to be? You either win the lucky sperm club or you kind of deal with whatever you're dealt? Why is it dependent on that?
Put on Someone Else’s Shoes
Last week we learned that a much loved family member has a terminal illness and may not be with us for much longer. Shortly after that we learned that our equally much loved family dog has a terminal illness and we will not have her for much longer either. Meanwhile, several family members who were incredibly careful at the beginning of the pandemic recently contracted COVID-19.
All of this is bringing me flashbacks to the last six months of my own father’s life: His attempts to find a cure, his scramble to make arrangements for my mother, his quick decline from a happy, optimistic forward looking man to a person wracked with pain and the humiliation of being an old man living at the sufferance of a medical profession designed to treat him like a child.
I will never wish this on anyone. Even people I don't particularly like.
So, how to say goodbye? How to say, “I love you and I wish this was different. I wish we had more time. I know this isn't fair. I wish this was easier for you.”
I don’t know. I haven't figured it out. If you think you know, please tell me.
In the end, all of this is very complicated and there’s no one way, one tried and true magic potion that can solve any of this. It may be that there is no good way to say good bye. It may be that different generations will have different experiences and if the world was fair, the older generation would be willing to put on the younger generations’ shoes and say, “Ok, now I get it” and vice versa. Maybe a small, bespectacled boy could ask the other boys if they could please find some other outlet for their hostility. And they would.
Take a deep breath. Say the “Serenity Prayer” over and over. Go for a walk. And remember:
The world may not be fair, but you can be fair. So go, be fair.
That’s all I've got for you this week. Some random jumbled thoughts. Kind of like that meeting you had last Tuesday with the Senior VP of Something Something or Other. I promise to do better next week.
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That’s it! I wish you a good week full of short meetings and fast wi-fi connections.
Have a great week!