Last night, I babysat for a family in Brentwood (cha-ching). Their house was gorgeous: plush white carpets, angular glass windows framing a vast forested living room; outside a sauna, a cold-plunge, hilltop views of the entirety of Los Angeles, lights aglow; inside photo frames of a happy family, shelves of books identifiable as Want-to-reads from my Goodreads collection, doors to well-decorated uninhabited rooms.
After the boys were in bed, tired from four hours of gaming, laser tag, battle royales, and the Simpsons, their dilf-of-a-dad came home from the Greater Los Angeles Make-A-Wish foundation fundraiser. He took off his shoes and lounged on the carpeted floor while I sat cross-legged on a charcoal couch, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous face-down on the glass coffee table.
He expounded on his life & career: CMO, CEO, Mattel, Pepsico, Starbucks, marketing, fired twice, married twice, jealous of his time-rich friends in his twenties and thirties, assured that financial success cannot find one in their forties without a solid foundation, that life is unfair and based on connections and proximity to power. Him: a native Angelino, a graduate of the reputable, extortionate high school Campbell Hall, an attractive man riddled with charisma and good fortune, I had no qualms nodding my head in agreement.
He asked if I had connections, if I needed his help getting in touch with anyone. The answer to this question is always yes. I responded that of course I would like connections and that I am in constant search of mentorship and guidance, for the very reason that I am not exactly sure what I want to be doing. I halfheartedly told him of my newest ambitions of pursuing my MSW, of joining the Peace Corps and living in Africa for two years. Looking around at his beautiful life, at the happiness and certainty on his face, I questioned if should just say fuck it all and sell myself out again to the corporate world, if I should divulge my history as the President of the Undergraduate Marketing Association at UC Berkeley or working at Bain & Company. My dreams of changing the world, of empowering and educating a population toward justice, organizing, and advocacy seemed at best unlikely and at worst, delusional.
This morning, as I closed my notebook after my daily bout of morning pages, I turned to Twitter. A tweet read: “Obama’s account is posting once every 8 minutes. The Democrats will do anything but denounce genocide and it will be their fault when Trump wins in two weeks.” A follow-up tweet was a poem about Obama, his unfulfilled promises for hope & change, his eventual retreat to a $12 million mansion in Martha’s vineyard. I Googled said residence (thank you internet for the democratization of information, where no one can hide). It’s commensurate with a castle, an impenetrable barricade sheltering Hope & Change from the realities of the world, a world unto itself. A man of the people! I scoffed. A hero to none. Another sell-out politician. And in that tweet, a poem I only partially comprehended [due to what I think is a purposeful miseducation in American history], I doubled down on my commitment toward the people, toward all of humanity and its liberation from suffering at its own tired hands.
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