How is it that life doesn’t simply drag you down? You always keep your spirits up. You are an inspiration. Free of scruples you can cakewalk through life without the anxieties faced by us mere mortals. The doubts we suffer concerning, say: the correctness of an action we partook in, or the quality of our part in a dialogue...these are things that do not even begin to bother you. If you step on a finger or two you might apologize and then move on. whereas I’d be up all night. You do not suffer from the pain you leave in your wake. It is of no concern to you. Such is life. Life is such. I meanwhile bang my head against the wall. Why, I ask myself, did I waste a dollar on that silly, silly bobble head doll from that crappy yard sale. You I imagine, spend thousands on cars you don’t need and question the expenditure not at all.
You remain perpetually sunny and bright. You lead a quality life: good food, good company, good everything. Your tolerance for not good is, I imagine, zero. Downers? Out! Mopers? Be gone with you! Complainers and whiners? Walk away! Politically correct? Don’t waste my time! Scruples?...Give me a break!
I don’t know how you do it. I’m so thin skinned, watery eyed, and sensitive. I ask too many questions. I’m paralyzed by the weight of every decision.
Really, in the end, it is no wonder I fail to make the kind of money you call: Making Money. I don’t have the skill sets needed. For goodness sake I got a degree in Fine Art!
If I were a banker I’d see a client who’d just been foreclosed on and be unable to function for the rest of the day. If an old lady walked into the bank and said her heat was off because she’d failed to pay her electricity bill I’d empathize! I wouldn’t be able to put on an act. I’d reach for the phone and call that heartless electricity company and start in with how cruel and inconsiderate this world could be. I’d get them to imagine their own grandmother shivering beside a cold heater, glassy eyed hoping, hoping it might come on. I’d force them to face the picture of blue skin showing through the holes in her stockings and ask them can they truly live with such guilt?
And of course I’d lose my job.
Guilt is a dirty word. You know this, but I cannot shake the feeling that guilt must be confronted and not simply shrugged off.
It is a terrible thing. I imagine my family going hungry and eating the drywall in their crumbling home and think: that must never be. I imagine it because it is a closer reality for me than it ever will be for you. Whereas for you a bankruptcy is a glitch, quickly fixed with an infusion of air from a pump, for me it would register as a permanent and insurmountable scar. You will always inevitably bounce back.
That said there has been a change in the air of late—a sea change. Where once upon a time a job lost or a business shut down would leave the victim feeling lost, ashamed, floundering in self doubt, these days people are learning to carry such travails with a certain levity, even with a certain rakish charm. We are learning from you. You have taught us to not take it all so seriously. Stigma? Nah! Debts? Forgettaboudit! Do the banks worry about their debts? No! Do they let moral turpitude hinder their every action? No they do not! Let us all follow by example. Those credit card offers? Utilize them! The banks offer them to you in hopes you do. They are our teachers, exemplars of how to behave in a world too oppressed by issues of right and wrong.
Thank you for being so supportive during my hand wringing. You may never respond to my letters but by acting as a sounding board you help more than you can ever know.
Sincerely,
Art O’Connor
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