In her open-hearted memoir, Becoming, Michelle Obama describes her restlessness in practicing law, and her mother’s implicit response to such musings:
“Fulfillment, I’m sure, struck her as a rich person’s conceit,” Obama writes.
My mom, too. Both my parents were children of Italian immigrants, raised in row-homes in South Philly, both achieving greatly but never lessening the mental grip on the fear of poverty, which I inherited like high cholesterol. In my senior year of high school, I approached my mom about taking a year off before college. I was smart enough to not to talk to my father about anything, but most of all this. My mom heard me, leaned into me and did that staccato-poking-of-the-chest thing that is in the DNA of an Italian mamma. She said, loudly:
“Whaddaya wanna do? Clean toilets the rest of your life?”
And that was the end of the discussion.
So, I went to college and eventually to law school and found myself bereft in a litigation practice because, although I was good at – an Italian from Philly for Pete’s sake - all the lying and the fighting made me soul sick. Firmly on the “Mommy Track,” my salary was based on part time, or “flex” time (which for a woman means working twice as hard for half the pay) and I never made more than a teacher. As a single mom, money was tight almost all the time but my three sons and I had health insurance, food, and an old house by the beach. I had every opportunity my grandparents dreamed of when they emigrated from Avellino, plus the rock-solid love of a huge Italian clan. I’d call it a “safety net” but it’s more like a quarry – hard landings, hard love, but always there.
My mother was spot on, really, and decades later the gap between law school and cleaning toilets has never been wider. Stephanie Land’s new memoir, Maid, Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive starkly narrates the counter-tale, the shadow side of my story. Stephanie was a single mom with a lineage of mental illness and generational poverty, carrying a karmic boatload of defeat. She is the woman my mom envisioned when she forbade me to put my education on pause. In her story, Stephanie does in fact, clean toilets to survive, joining the ranks of the working poor who do the filthiest jobs for the least amount of money. She doesn’t have the energy to “dream big!” or dabble in “prosperity mindset” because she’s always on the edge of homelessness with no family to fall into.
It’s a scary story and one that painfully represents the lives of so many in our country. Anywhere from 50-70% of people in the US live paycheck-to-paycheck according to recent data during the government shutdown, and 12% overall live in poverty (approximated by a family of four living on less than $25,000). A third of our citizens are in “near poverty,” meaning they don’t meet the mark but hover closely. While I surely understand a very lean budget, I never had to choose between food and rent. Apparently, most people face that dilemma regularly. While some of us struggle with notions of “purpose” and “happiness,” this is a Caribbean vacation compared to the lives of the working poor.
The difference between Stephanie and me is simple: I had a generational leg up, grandparents on both sides who left Italy to become bricklayers, grocers, and tailors to raise kids who would be doctors, teachers, and lawyers. Even when I’ve hit on hard times – and I have – my siblings would never let me fall too far. Stephanie Land describes a deeply troubled and dysfunctional thread of a family, barely able to sustain themselves let alone her and her daughter. And though I take calculated risks in changing jobs, moving to different places and trying to innovate my way to well-being, single moms like Stephanie just don’t have that luxury. When you don’t have enough money to be secure, all you think about is that you don’t have enough money.
So, what is the relationship between those who dream and those who are too exhausted or despairing to even try? Do those of us fortunate enough to be dissatisfied, in search of high meaning, more purposeful work, well-being, or enlightenment have an obligation to open space for everyone to have the benefit of aspiring to better? If so, what does that look like? I’m pretty sure it’s not another app.
What’s an antsy gal or guy to do, then, when the itch to change starts and life restlessness creeps up like a tide? If traditional institutions like politics or nonprofits just grind out more of the same, what good does my search for meaning do? Mine – and a lot of other people’s, by the way, judging by the sale of self-help books, seminars, webinars, coaching sessions, weekend workshops, shamanic journeys, healings, Facebook posts hawking game-changing, life-changing top ten rules-affirmations-secrets-principles-plans of successful, happy, wealthy and wise people? Seriously, it’s like an epidemic of pain and worry for the well and well-off and there’s a huge market for people brainwashed into buying their way to anything, as if human flourishing can be dropped-shipped from Amazon.
Wrestling with these notions, I went to the gym this morning to settle my thoughts. The Zumba class was filled with older broads like me, in various stages of inhibition but our teacher, Sean, sang and danced like he was on Broadway. Truly, it was uplifting to see him swing his hips and cha-cha like nobody was watching. Kind of a portly fella, Sean was wearing random guy grey sweat-shorts, a T-shirt that didn’t quite cover his belly when he lifted his arms with exhilaration, and a baseball hat that said BE LOVE. Marimba! He’d yell gleefully, clapping and waving like a little kid fully in the throes of play. He was a joy to behold. How many people do you know who are truly a joy to be around?
As I walked home in the Seattle rain, thinking about the luxury of searching for purpose and meaning, Sean’s happiness radiated in me like the non-existent sun and I realized here it is: clearly, this is a guy living his full and happy life which doesn’t appear to involve serious board meetings, status, or the faux-busyness that consumes us like fire. He had a different kind of fire – the passion of doing something he loved. That’s plenty - more than plenty - because his cup clearly overflowed, and gratefully so, all over me.
Maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe we just take some time to listen to that deep, small steady voice buried beneath the worry and woe, which will tell us exactly where we need to go to find and spread joy. And with Sean living his best life, his happiness quite literally goes viral, and our spirits are lifted. Then, still lit by Sean’s fire, I go home and do what I love – write, write, write – and spread some more thought and joy, and then who knows what? The drudgery of all that damn searching, yearning, workshop-ing, reading, seeking, praying, whining just falls off like an old winter coat, and we pass it around, this torch of joy, when we do what we really love.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the Zen master credited with bringing the practice to the West, was a man of few words and here are his three best: Shine one corner. Find something you truly love or want to do and make it shine. Teach Zumba, work in your garden, help a neighbor, run for office, build your family’s love, sell flowers, bake cakes, cure cancer – it doesn’t matter what it is and you don’t need a guru to tell you what to do. For the sake and the good of the world and the working poor, just go ahead and do it, shine that corner, because ultimately that light will connect with another, then another and more, like a jeweled net that holds us tenderly together. Mythologist Joseph Campbell put it this way: “The influence of a vital person vitalizes,” and like the Butterfly Effect, a wave of your vitality will at some point reach those who are suffering.
You do not need one more book or seminar to quell your endless and privileged quest for happiness. Be quiet for a bit and your inner self will tell you what’s next. Then, take the money you spend on seminars, retreats and books, and help a single mom who can’t afford child care.
