Everyone has a different measure of what it means to be "making it".
Not "making it" like 1950's or even 1970's sex (recently watched Taxi Driver 1976 and the 12 year old prostitute Jodie Foster asks Robert De Niro if they're gonna "make it" or not). I think "making it" is also a mafia term, but I'm not sure what it means.
To say another way, everyone has their own definition of what luxury is. A washing machine, for those who spent their early 20's and 30's washing clothes in a big pot down by the river where it took literally all day, one day a week. A car, for those who ride a bike to work everyday (in America, that's usually not something you do by choice). A house, for those who share the walls, floors and ceilings of their home with strangers.
When you live at the tip of the spear of the modern world, penetrating through the history and customs of thousands of years and billions of people, the definition of luxury becomes more abstract, more creative. Just ask someone who lives in an urban-suburban community within about 10-20 miles from either coast of the United States, over 30 years old, carrying an advanced degree. They have washing machines and cars and, well probably not a house, but close. (Maybe by 40 years old. Or 50. Maybe you should just accept reality and purchase your burial plot now before even that becomes unaffordable.)
As per the popular media, luxury for these folks is avocado toast, complaining about Twitter on Twitter, or never ever leaving your house for any reason ever again because you can use your exo-cortex to order food and supplies and eventually even virtual hugs to your virtual skinsuit (true).
I propose a different measure, one that will certainly be found with strong disagreement, perhaps even outrage, by many. The measure of whether or not you've "made it" is one simple thing - how much stuff you carry in your pockets.
How much stuff do you carry in your pockets? Keys phone wallet?
I used to sit outside early mornings and watch people walk to the train to go to work, all the way from the suburbs of New Jersey to the transportation trap that is New York City (sometimes you can get in, but you can't get out, an all too common experience for the hundreds of thousands of daily commuters). Bookbags and briefcases, sure. Some people had a suitcase on wheels, every day. Some people had 2 suitcases on wheels, and a bookbag, a lunchbag, and a purse, every day. Some people, correction, some men, have a carbiner clip on their belt loop, laden with a whole Groundskeeper Willie's worth of keys, and a bottle of water, but that's it.
But there was one man, one, who would walk to the train station every single day with absolutely nothing in his pockets; every day. He was going in for a full day of work, that I know because I often saw him coming back around 5 or 6pm. How can I be so sure his pockets were empty? He wore really nice slacks, not the working man's blue jeans, so you could see even the slightest outline of his pockets from the outside, and there was never, ever anything in his pockets. He carried his phone in his hand and that was it.
How do you pay for lunch with no wallet? I don't think this man pays for lunch. You need to drink water on the train, the one that gets stopped in the tunnel for 2 hours on your way to work? No, you don't. You are so refreshingly and satisfyingly hydrated from your life of luxury that you don't need that. And when you get where you're going, you don't have to find the water, they give you water, just like they give you lunch. You don't need a briefcase, because shit I don't know what the hell you do for a living but if you're not even bringing a folder with some papers in it to even ---look--- like you're doing something important every day, then damn you have a nice ass job, and you sure as hell don't need a briefcase.
No phone charger. No keys? No keys. He probably doesn't even have a car. Or better yet, his driver has the car, so his driver carries the keys. He probably takes the train because there's a toilet on the train. For this man, luxury is a limo with a toilet in it, so that he can be driven to work in his own personal car but also go the bathroom with dignity in case there's a 2-hour traffic jam, while he's drinking his 20-ounce morning coffee. I wonder if he even realizes that having absolutely nothing in his pockets is like the greatest mark of success in this world.
We live in a consumer society. Our economy, and in fact our entire Western civilization, is upheld by "disposable income". We literally keep our country running by buying useless shit (disposable shit). We carry that shit with us everywhere we go. The water bottle. Why have a vast infrastructure of public water fountains where anyone can get a drink of water anytime, when you can instead carry your own water around with you all day? By the bottle? Nah son we live in America we carry our water around with us in fucking gallons. Why carry a car key when you can opt for this battery-powered piece of plastic that's bigger than your fist? How else are you going to show other people how much you're "making it" if they can't see the type of car you drive when you're not in the car anymore? (My conspiracy theory is that car key fobs keep getting bigger so that we can't keep them in our pockets anymore, and have to show off the brand, free advertising, because it's really all about advertising.)
I don't want to be a walking billboard for disposable income or disposable consumer products, and so I try to carry as little as possible with me, but alas I am not making it. Lo, water bottle, behold, keys. As I lie in my comfortable bed, in my climate controlled apartment, I fall asleep to dreams of a life where I have none of these, and I know it doesn't make sense, but my own body dislolves, until there's nothing left but plastic and PFAS. I made it.
No comments:
Post a Comment