The Dream and the Green Light
There is this town next to the one I grew up in called Orangevale. It’s come to symbolize everything I don’t want my life to lead up to. I remember as a kid just getting this choking feeling in my throat whenever I would visit friends there. I remember realizing “I’d rather put a gun in my mouth than end up living here.”
Not because it was poor–it wasn’t–but because it was just sad. You could just feel the toll that getting up everyday and working 40 hours a week as mediocre insurance salesman or secretary took on people. I drove through it a while back and from the cocoon of my car remember hearing those piercing screams of desperation rattling off chain link fences and dry, brown lawns. People just waiting for the weekend so they can sit and eat dinner on tv trays or yell at their kids. Alinsky called this “living in illusions of partial escape.”
I still feel that choking–that fear. I just cannot end up there. To work your whole life at the governmentally mandated limit for what? At something you’re ok at but would quit if you could get a few more dollars doing something else, for what? To have the white picket fence that needs so desperately to be repaired but you just don’t care enough to do it, for what? To be so angry, and confused, and wonder why your kids act out in violence, for what?
And for some reason, kids I went to college with are just counting the days before they graduate and move back. No wonder it’s all about indulgence, artifice, delusion and those “if I don’t travel abroad now, I’ll never get to do it again” trips they have the state pay for. It’s a last gasp before they voluntarily go under. Worse, most of my friends never even left.
That’s not me. I won’t let it be. I’d rather be dirt-fucking-poor and doing exactly what I want then take the sucker’s payoff of that life. Or, better yet, have both–the money that comes with rarity and value and the passion of a life of meaning. But you’ll hear a lot of excuses for why that’s not possible or not worth it or too hard–ask yourself, as I try to, “according to who?” And then you’ll see them as the tinny, self-serving rationalizations from people scared to death of life and effort that they are.
This is exactly how I feel,
I am stuck in one of those towns that you described, and I wonder how these people can live the half life they have just for the benefits of having that house or 08 model truck/car, the problem with opposing such a lifestyle is that it is so very seductive to do what every one else is doing, to take the path well traveled, to pass on dreams..its scary because I see people who are smarter, stronger, better looking etc.. who have fallen..
Other then being aware of this kinda of life Ryan how do you avoid this?
I have one comment on Ryan’s post referring to this quote: “I’d rather be dirt-fucking-poor and doing exactly what I want then take the sucker’s payoff of that life.”
Sometimes the hard part is figuring out what exactly it is that would make you happy. A person could spend a lifetime trying to figure that out only to wake up one day and realize you’ve wasted your life. Now with less time, a family, a morgage, car payments, etc … it becomes much harder to change.
cadet07: Ryan will chime in too I’m sure, but here is my 2 cents
I think you need to just believe in yourself and know that you don’t have to live that life. It’s easy to get bogged down with a wife and kids and eventually just give up on wanting more. If you’ve succumbed to the idea that you’re satisfied working a 9-5 then what else do you have to look forward to other than new cars and a white fence? It’s also easy to hold onto the idea that something will come your way or you’ll one day come up with an idea or motivation that will get you out of the day-job rut. You can’t let that happen, you need to latch onto an idea and work towards that today.
I graduated from school 2 years ago and work as an engineer currently. I’m definitely not claiming to be a model or poster-boy for bucking the trend (as evident by my 9-5 job), but I now have a clear plan to achieve a goal (something that is important to me that was on my mind all through college), and I’ve cut out some of the fat from my life (ex: I sold an expensive car I bought when I graduated and now drive a beater pick-up truck to save money).
I feel like people like that are like the people in the Chuck Palahniuk quote you posted a little while back. Even though they may not be kids they’re still leading lives devoid of authentic passion. They follow a safe and prescribed path.
I imagine the important part of the lives of people who perceive a limited scope of menial gratification is that casual moment in the supermarket: one mom runs into the other and they compare the jobs and status of their children. When they push their carts back down the aisles they have the individuality of their kids with them.
Have you ever (I’d assume you did at some point) read Bukowski? I’ve found him as a person, and among his work especially the poems enormously inspiring. Not quite a rolemodel, but surely a help figuring out who you want to be, at least to me.
Being 19 years old, and therefore immature and retarded, I completely agree with you here. I’m a freshman in college, and I decided last year that I would rather claw my eyeballs out than wind up in a job/career that I loathed with every fiber of my being. I decided that I would never become a minion in a huge corporation unless it was a job that I wanted to do and enjoyed. Thusly, I’m a history major looking forward to classes and a job that I’ll be excited to go to every day. Life isn’t life if you’re not enjoying it, and I’d rather enjoy it than be making 6 figures and living a shell of a life surrounded by the likes of Paris Hilton and every other fuckstick in Hollywood.
Boy, you fuckin’ said it, brother. I’m a few months shy of graduating and I’m having an impossible time explaining, without being insulting, why I’m switching coasts when I graduate to the people who live in my town. My family and everyone I knew growing up is just going to stay there, in this suburban, boring, well-at-least-we-have-an-Applebees town and no one understands why that’s a life that I’m terrified of. And if they don’t fucking get it, they won’t. That’s my problem dealing with these people; They think staying in the same nothing town is a great life, so my explanation for why it would kill me will never make any sense to them, just like their rationalizations for staying would be lost on me.
I think about getting stuck in that town, and working some bullshit temp-turned-permanent job. I think about that life, right down to the girl I would marry, (it would be a settlement appropriate to the rest of my mediocre life there), and it scares the shit out of me.
If you look at this from a biological standpoint it’s quite simple. We are wired for a tribal existence. We work better in small groups/towns. This relatively new concept of people leaving everything behind and trying to make a new life alone in a big city is a very new concept for humans in the grand scheme.
The old town is familiar. You know everyone and everything. It’s comfortable. Predictable. Safe. A group provides social support, people to turn to, to talk to, and is a source of help in times of emergency.
I always question why people do these things then I realize that there are some people that don’t want to peak outside the cave. Those that will never leave the country and those that will never leave their town. There is a big f-ed up world out there and it’s dangerous, and dark and cold. It takes a strong person the tackle it.
“You could just feel the toll that getting up everyday and working 40 hours a week as mediocre insurance salesman or secretary took on people.”
So true. To add to your thoughts:
I was a consultant for 3 years and by most quantifiable measures, I had it made. I was making good money for someone out of college (~$70K), had months off in between projects, and traveled all over the world on the company tab (including working a project that essentially became a 5 month vacation in Europe). When I was working, I rarely worked more than 40 hours a week and even then, it was always work from home Fridays….
…and I was completely miserable. There were a few factors involved (ie. I hated being on the road ALL the time), but the key factor was the job itself. It was boring, mundane, and unchallenging. It was the quintessential corporate job where everyone basically did what they were told even if it didn’t have any purpose and your primary objective was to cover your ass. The perks were great, but the soul crushing 9-5 severely outweighed them.
My point is that I wasn’t some sleepy town local, I was a “savvy jet setter”! … but IT DIDN’T MATTER. Mediocrity in Orangevale is the same as it is flying first class to Copenhagen. These cookie cutter towns and the insurance salesmen that populate them provide clear, visible examples of the despair that comes from living life at half throttle, but it occurs everywhere. Don’t get tricked into thinking you can escape mediocrity JUST by escaping your local Orangevale.
Daniel is exactly right. I don’t really have a problem with suburbia–just really shitty suburbia. “We have an Applebees!” If you’re going to work 40 hours a week to have a nice house and go on vacations with your family and have time for hobbies or whatever–that’s awesome, a lot of people are happy that way. I’m talking about the shitty one-story house with 3 cars in the driveway and one on the lawn. You’re buying into a dream that just isn’t real. It’s fake. You’re fucking poor and unsuccessful and you’re trying to trick yourself into thinking it’s something else because you purchased all the things “you were told made you middle class.”