December 05, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:Lots of luck
Peggy Noonan wrote something right after 9/11 that I liked very much:
I know people who are feeling a sense of betrayal at the big change, as if they thought history were a waiter in a crisp white jacket, and though they ordered two more of the same, instead--instead!--he brought them, on a pretty silver platter, something quite dreadful.. . .
People always think good news will continue. I guess it's in our nature to think that whatever is around us while we're here is what will continue until we're not.
And then things change, and you're surprised. I guess surprise is in our nature too. And then after the surprise we burrow down into ourselves and pull out what we need to survive, and go on, and endure.
But there's something else, and I am thinking of it.
I knew for many years a handsome and intelligent woman of middle years who had everything anyone could dream of--home, children, good marriage, career, wealth. She was secure. And she and her husband had actually gotten these good things steadily, over 25 years of effort, and in that time they had suffered no serious reverses or illnesses, no tragedies or bankruptcies or dark stars. Each year was better than the previous.
It was wonderful to see. But as I came to know her I realized that she didn't think she had what she had because she was lucky, or blessed. She thought she had them because she was better. She had lived a responsible, effortful life; of course it had come together. She had what she had because she was good, and prudent.
She deserved it. She was better than the messy people down the block.
She forgot she was lucky and blessed!
You forget you're lucky when your luck is so consistent that it confounds the very idea of luck. You begin to think your good fortune couldn't be luck, it must have been . . . talent. Or effort. Or superiority.
The consistency of America's luck may have fooled many of us into forgetting we were all lucky to be born here, lucky to be living now, lucky to have hospitals and operas and a film industry and a good electrical system. We were born into it. We were lucky. We were blessed.
We thought we were the heirs of John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk, Mr. Levitt of Levittown. And we are. But still, every generation ya gotta earn it. It doesn't mean you're better; it means you're lucky, and ya gotta earn it.
You can phrase the sentiment in a cynical wasy: "[Censored] happens". Or you can phrase it in a cheerful way: "Count your blessings". But either way, they add up to the same thing: the universe is not here to make you happy. That's your job.
Posted by Jane Galt at December 5, 2005 08:09 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksWow. Several beautiful posts in a row. I had forgotten for a while how big my parents' house was, but then it was gotten through a free GI bill education and a fierce determination to NEVER live like their parents, lucky to get a dollar for picking cotton (I'm not making this up). And that education came from having to go to war in the Pacific, so you can't say it was cheap. And while they had some nice assets in the '60's, they couldn't buy a drive-through angioplasty for any amount.
I live in China for now, where it only takes a short look around to see how lucky your US passport makes you. Proud to be American? Why? It was accidental! Just lucky, lucky, lucky. Thanks for the reminder, and I hope your readers absorb it.
Posted by: Sam_S on December 5, 2005 08:54 PMIt sounds like a Monty Python skit, but my father literally spent his first few years in this Vale of Tears in a hole in the ground. It was the Depression, and my grandfather and grandmother's only asset of note was a small unmortgaged plot of land, in which my grandfather dug a basement by hand and then slowly, slowly, built a house himself. Whenever I've had an inclination to feel sorry for myself, I've thought of what my immediate ancestors endured, to say nothing of those who lived in the 19th century or prior, and have endeavored to steel my spine.
The first time I traveled to Baltimore, I visited the U.S.S. Constellation with a friend, moored in the Inner Harbor, and listened to a Park Ranger detail what life was like for a sailor at the end of the 18th century. As we gazed upon the tiny berths below decks that the sailors shared, and heard how 12 hours of shore leave PER YEAR was not unheard of, my pal said to me sotto voice, out of the corner of his mouth, "Our ancestors were tough little fuckers.".
Here's to all of them, upon whose shoulders we all stand upon, and all too often obliviously.
Posted by: Will Allen on December 5, 2005 09:50 PMFor an interesting book on this very topic, pick up Nassim Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness: The hidden role of chance in life and the markets".
Posted by: jimbo on December 6, 2005 08:50 AMJane or Mindles, my excessively graphic anecdote (my apologies) may have made your site forbidden for my computer. May I beg your forgiveness?
Posted by: Will Allen on December 6, 2005 09:49 AMJane or Mindles, my excessively graphic anecdote (my apologies) may have made your site forbidden for my computer. May I beg your forgiveness?
I don't condone the use of outright obscenity in any context, but I don't think you have personally sabotaged anything, either (replace the four-letter cartoon cursing, !%&#, with any four-letter vulgarity you can think of):
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ajanegalt.net+!%&#
But as I came to know her I realized that she didn't think she had what she had because she was lucky, or blessed. She thought she had them because she was better. She had lived a responsible, effortful life; of course it had come together. She had what she had because she was good, and prudent.
A nutshell summary of the extreme conservative position; the extreme liberal position being that few or no people fall into fiscal disrepair through fault of their own, therefore the government should be exceedingly generous. The facts of the matter, and practical social-political options, fall somewhere in the middle as always.
Posted by: anony-mouse on December 6, 2005 08:28 PMInstead of "luck", I would say that previous generations of Americans have done well on the whole. They did not just get lucky. On the whole, they worked hard and smart during decades that other countries fell into communism or dissolved in corruption from other sources. On the whole, the people made their way in the world, while people of other countries whined about being unlucky.
Of course, that doesn't mean it's a free ticket for things to stay that way. Luckily, we do have a world of bad examples to compare against. Do we want to have a country like the one we inherited, or one of these others?
Posted by: Daublin on December 7, 2005 07:02 PMComments are Closed.