How the other half lives
This is a gratitude post. Or possibly a meta discussion of gratitude. I'm not sure yet, because I haven't written it yet.
What's poking around in my mind is a thing my husband said last night when we were out at a fancy restaurant for our anniversary. He was eating his "surf and turf" lobster and steak and oohed over the way the restaurant had sliced the lobster tail to make it easier to extract. (We are old pros at eating lobster, mind you, he was well able to extract the tail if it hadn't been prepped.) He said, "wow, this is fancy, I guess this is how the other half live."
Years ago his father said the same thing and it really stuck in my mind. So much so that I probably blogged about it. (NTS: it was probably April or May of 2003). We were sitting at an umbrella table next to a garden in the Caribbean resort of Paraside Island in the Bahamas. He was taking a moment to enjoy the surroundings and I know it's just a turn of phrase, but it was so oddly disengaged from the reality that this is how HE lived. Was living. He wan't crashing this party, this was HIS party. Yet somehow he felt like resorts in the Caribbean and - for my husband - prepping a lobster for the table - is stuff other people get to enjoy that they just glimpse.
I'm the opposite. I walk around feeling RICH.Sure, I only find myself in the Bahamas or eating well-prepped lobster once in a while, but I *DO* do these things on a fairly regular basis. This is just astonishingly wonderful to me. I remember eating kale from the box prepared for poor families at the food co-op. I remember grocery shopping with a calculator. I remember getting a job so I could pay my long distance bill when I was 15. I remember not having money for both gas AND groceries so eating peanutbutter with tomatoes that a kind person gave us because that's what we had: a jar of peanutbutter and excess produce from someone else's garden. We had a pair of sneakers and either sandals or winter boots and those were two pairs of shoes and we just didn't go places where we'd need dress shoes (other than the sandals.) I was born over 50 years ago and when people were poor in the 1960's they were REALLY poor. The kind of poor where, when we recall our family's dead children now, we realize they would have lived if we'd just had money for medical care.
So when I was at this fancy restaurant and getting excellent service in a lovely environment I totally appreciated it. Not with a whiff of envy that other people get this all the time, but with appreciation that I can get this if I want. (We don't eat out very often; this was on the occasion of our 27th wedding anniversary.) You may recall that for our 25th anniversary we did a cruise around the Mediterranean followed by a trip to Rome. That's something we'd do every five years or so, not every year. Eating out at a restaurant with a bill close to $100 each is something we'd do about once a year.
The other thing I noted with an odd form of gratitude is that the food we ate there - while good - wasn't actually excellent. The steak wasn't the best we'd ever had. The lobster was a bit rubbery and salty rather than the melt-in-your-mouth sweet lobster we routinely eat in Maine. We were evaluating the restaurant afterwards and were thinking about this and realized that - d'oh - we get grass-fed free-range beef from a local meat farm and it's really fantastic meat: the steaks we get from there are the best we've ever tasted, and we get these maybe once every month or so. And in Maine we get our lobster from Covey's lobster boat when he's tied up to the pier on the island. These lobsters are healthy and well-treated and I know how to cook them. Basically, I am really really good at finding food made of food from artisan sources. I'm allergic to corn and can't eat anything with corn syrup or "modified food starch" (read: "corn") and that means I cook from scratch (and so does my family) much of the time. The thing the restaurant did for me was still valuable: they shopped and prepared and cooked and served it with a lovely presentation in a lovely atmosphere - but we don't go to fancy restaurants to get equisite food. We have that at home. I made myself an iced coffee before I sat down to write this and it was utterly delicious, just the way I want it. With no corn syrup.
I walked down to the Farmer's Market today and bought a bunch of flowers for planters and some vegetable starts for my garden and containers. I brought the dockcart the half mile there and back; it's very useful. I spent some time getting planters all set with flowers and then made myself a big salad from the salad greens I bought from the farmers. I cannot explain how lucky I feel to be able to eat local foods so much of the year. In shorthand terms, I feel RICH.
Tomorrow I'm headed to the island mostly to mow the lawn and do another round of painting. I will have dinner at the ocean with my husband - probably lobster - after a hard day's work. I know my husband doesn't feel rich when we do this - we're the scut laborers for this house - but I do.
I said something about being rich out loud to someone the other day and she looked at me really weirdly and it reminded me that it isn't socially acceptable to self-identify as this. If I'm rich I'm not supposed to bill clients who have less than me. If I am rich I should support people who are poor - for example, let tenants not pay rent. There's a huge iceberg of antipathy towards the rich that runs deep deep deep. It has something to do with envy, which is an unpleasant emotion to feel and unpleasant to engender in someone else. I don't feel envious very often, but when I do it's like when I feel worried: It causes me to deconstruct it to figure out what's going on. For example, the other day I saw a beautiful quiet car - a Tesla - being driven by one of my neighbors. I had a pang of envy which utterly surprised me. Oh, did I *want* a Tesla car? Do I care about cars now? Turns out I care a little bit, but not enough to put "buy a Tesla" into my list of goals. It isn't impossible for me to get a Tesla, but I'd have to work longer hours and put off retirement and probably not put as much towards my child's upcoming college education. I could if I wanted, though. If I wanted bad enough, that is. I'm okay with that.
Very few people are truly rich in the sense of not having to make any trade-offs. Work longer hours versus retiring early, choose luxury travel over buying a Tesla; these are the choices of the moderate rich but the moderate rich mostly doesn't acknowledge it, claiming that only the 1% are RICH. But I disagree. If you can conceivably take a $1000 cruise with a $100 excursion to Paradise Island for the day then you are living the way "the other half lives" and that means you're one of the other half. Own it. Appreciate it. Feel grateful.
At last, I do.
What's poking around in my mind is a thing my husband said last night when we were out at a fancy restaurant for our anniversary. He was eating his "surf and turf" lobster and steak and oohed over the way the restaurant had sliced the lobster tail to make it easier to extract. (We are old pros at eating lobster, mind you, he was well able to extract the tail if it hadn't been prepped.) He said, "wow, this is fancy, I guess this is how the other half live."
Years ago his father said the same thing and it really stuck in my mind. So much so that I probably blogged about it. (NTS: it was probably April or May of 2003). We were sitting at an umbrella table next to a garden in the Caribbean resort of Paraside Island in the Bahamas. He was taking a moment to enjoy the surroundings and I know it's just a turn of phrase, but it was so oddly disengaged from the reality that this is how HE lived. Was living. He wan't crashing this party, this was HIS party. Yet somehow he felt like resorts in the Caribbean and - for my husband - prepping a lobster for the table - is stuff other people get to enjoy that they just glimpse.
I'm the opposite. I walk around feeling RICH.Sure, I only find myself in the Bahamas or eating well-prepped lobster once in a while, but I *DO* do these things on a fairly regular basis. This is just astonishingly wonderful to me. I remember eating kale from the box prepared for poor families at the food co-op. I remember grocery shopping with a calculator. I remember getting a job so I could pay my long distance bill when I was 15. I remember not having money for both gas AND groceries so eating peanutbutter with tomatoes that a kind person gave us because that's what we had: a jar of peanutbutter and excess produce from someone else's garden. We had a pair of sneakers and either sandals or winter boots and those were two pairs of shoes and we just didn't go places where we'd need dress shoes (other than the sandals.) I was born over 50 years ago and when people were poor in the 1960's they were REALLY poor. The kind of poor where, when we recall our family's dead children now, we realize they would have lived if we'd just had money for medical care.
So when I was at this fancy restaurant and getting excellent service in a lovely environment I totally appreciated it. Not with a whiff of envy that other people get this all the time, but with appreciation that I can get this if I want. (We don't eat out very often; this was on the occasion of our 27th wedding anniversary.) You may recall that for our 25th anniversary we did a cruise around the Mediterranean followed by a trip to Rome. That's something we'd do every five years or so, not every year. Eating out at a restaurant with a bill close to $100 each is something we'd do about once a year.
The other thing I noted with an odd form of gratitude is that the food we ate there - while good - wasn't actually excellent. The steak wasn't the best we'd ever had. The lobster was a bit rubbery and salty rather than the melt-in-your-mouth sweet lobster we routinely eat in Maine. We were evaluating the restaurant afterwards and were thinking about this and realized that - d'oh - we get grass-fed free-range beef from a local meat farm and it's really fantastic meat: the steaks we get from there are the best we've ever tasted, and we get these maybe once every month or so. And in Maine we get our lobster from Covey's lobster boat when he's tied up to the pier on the island. These lobsters are healthy and well-treated and I know how to cook them. Basically, I am really really good at finding food made of food from artisan sources. I'm allergic to corn and can't eat anything with corn syrup or "modified food starch" (read: "corn") and that means I cook from scratch (and so does my family) much of the time. The thing the restaurant did for me was still valuable: they shopped and prepared and cooked and served it with a lovely presentation in a lovely atmosphere - but we don't go to fancy restaurants to get equisite food. We have that at home. I made myself an iced coffee before I sat down to write this and it was utterly delicious, just the way I want it. With no corn syrup.
I walked down to the Farmer's Market today and bought a bunch of flowers for planters and some vegetable starts for my garden and containers. I brought the dockcart the half mile there and back; it's very useful. I spent some time getting planters all set with flowers and then made myself a big salad from the salad greens I bought from the farmers. I cannot explain how lucky I feel to be able to eat local foods so much of the year. In shorthand terms, I feel RICH.
Tomorrow I'm headed to the island mostly to mow the lawn and do another round of painting. I will have dinner at the ocean with my husband - probably lobster - after a hard day's work. I know my husband doesn't feel rich when we do this - we're the scut laborers for this house - but I do.
I said something about being rich out loud to someone the other day and she looked at me really weirdly and it reminded me that it isn't socially acceptable to self-identify as this. If I'm rich I'm not supposed to bill clients who have less than me. If I am rich I should support people who are poor - for example, let tenants not pay rent. There's a huge iceberg of antipathy towards the rich that runs deep deep deep. It has something to do with envy, which is an unpleasant emotion to feel and unpleasant to engender in someone else. I don't feel envious very often, but when I do it's like when I feel worried: It causes me to deconstruct it to figure out what's going on. For example, the other day I saw a beautiful quiet car - a Tesla - being driven by one of my neighbors. I had a pang of envy which utterly surprised me. Oh, did I *want* a Tesla car? Do I care about cars now? Turns out I care a little bit, but not enough to put "buy a Tesla" into my list of goals. It isn't impossible for me to get a Tesla, but I'd have to work longer hours and put off retirement and probably not put as much towards my child's upcoming college education. I could if I wanted, though. If I wanted bad enough, that is. I'm okay with that.
Very few people are truly rich in the sense of not having to make any trade-offs. Work longer hours versus retiring early, choose luxury travel over buying a Tesla; these are the choices of the moderate rich but the moderate rich mostly doesn't acknowledge it, claiming that only the 1% are RICH. But I disagree. If you can conceivably take a $1000 cruise with a $100 excursion to Paradise Island for the day then you are living the way "the other half lives" and that means you're one of the other half. Own it. Appreciate it. Feel grateful.
At last, I do.