In purely existential terms, each day is for me, a blank sheet of paper, a black document screen, a new start, a chance to go boldly where I have never quite gotten to before, and by each mid-morning I have accomplished just enough to be in need of a brand new work space. So I tend to judge myself not by how much I have done but by how much damage I haven’t. I am always asking myself how much worse off I am than I was several hours ago?
Romney and Ryan, however,are not interested in my hardly exciting psychological conundrums; they want an economic answer. OK. I ask myself again, seriously, soberly, somberly: the answer is uncomfortably simple-- No. No. One million times No.
And this is the story. Four years ago, I was a teacher at a suburban Philadelphia private high school teaching Latin and less often Ancient Greek. My pay was comparable to those in the surrounding public schools. I had reasonably good health insurance coverage. I worked at the same school in the summers for extra money. I got out of work early enough to pick up my two children from school or to watch their soccer or baseball games. My retirement account was a reasonably good one. I worked a reasonable distance from my home.
Today, four years later, I make thousands less, specifically my monthly wages are less despite the fact that I am no longer paid in the summer months. I drive 180 miles round-trip to my job, not only incurring the cost of gasoline and tolls but having driven two cars that we had paid off into engine failure with the result that we now have have two new monthly car payments. I have unable to secure regular summer employment-- teaching, tutoring or bagging groceries at a local Trader Joe’s.
To digress:
Maybe I just do not perform well on those 100 multiple choice hypothetical situation standardized test questions which are part of those applications.
EXAMPLE: What would you do if a customer went ballistic to you about your employer?
Maybe I just do not perform well on those 100 multiple choice hypothetical situation standardized test questions which are part of those applications.
EXAMPLE: What would you do if a customer went ballistic to you about your employer?
- smile agreeably and listen to the grievances sincerely and sympathetically
- agree with the customer that your employer is terrible one and that if you didn't need the money you would tell him to kiss your ass and quit
- reprimand and rebuke the customer curse for curse and threaten to use a cantaloupe or eggplant if he or she continued
- call 911
You see I always choose A. I think that’s what “they” expect, even when I want to choose B. It’s just so hard for me. I have never been good at standardized tests.
At any rate, my wife is forced to get the kids up and ready for and back from school since I leave too early and get home too late to be much good. The monthly mortgage precludes any hope of securing a seasonal rental so that I do not have to make this drive each day.
The truth is, however, that I do not blame the President. The free enterprise economy simply does not put a terribly high value on Latin teachers. I can’t say I disagree. I was the one who decided to pursue my doctorate in Classics, i.e. dead languages. NO one forced me. I simply pursued that which was most intellectually stimulating. Years later, I have the ability to dissect a poem ad uncover the deepest of meanings not unlike the pathologist who after several hours discloses that the cause of death was choking on an ice cube induced by the premeditated joke of the ex-spouse. It’s just that the market currently does not find my work as valuable.
I had, however, a decent economic existence all things considered until I lost my job teaching Latin at the suburban Philadelphia private school. The only element in my otherwise gainful employment was the Chairman of the Classics Department whose administrative protocol involved some degree of psychological chicanery tolerated in spite of the constant turnover in employees and the complaints lodged against him by at least two teachers at a time when the school had no HR Department.
Pushed to the terminus post quem, when the decision before me was to continue to live under this cloud or leave, I caved in. That was the afternoon that I was forced to read a letter that my overseer had written while the Upper School Directer and HR Director, who had already read the contents, watched. I was to respond to a characterization of myself as the absolute worst teacher and colleague that had ever conjugated a Latin verb or scanned a line of Vergil's dactylic hexameter. According to his assessment, I had no business in the classroom unless I submitted to probationary measures that would solidify the manipulative and passive-aggressive hold he had on me.
After months of really trying to remain positive for my students, it came time for the mediation talks arranged for me, my boss, and two colleagues so that he could better redefine and describe his abnormal and abusive tactics and so that I could learn to appreciate them more. I listened as he once again tossed me under the proverbial bus-- I was waging war against him and his department; I needed to show greater respect; I needed to show greater sorrow for my being and come up with a more comprehensive plan for atonement; there was too much laughter in my classroom; did I really think I had the intellectual sharpness to work for him. There was nothing new here-- the deepest cuts remained the intellectual insults and taking the joy I brought to the classroom and gave to my students for nonsense and insouciance. But I was different today.
Months ago, during the letter-reading, I figured that I had been much too full of pride--students learned and enjoyed my classes; parents would praise my efforts on their daughters’ behalf. I was a good teacher who thought he was the only teacher. When I drove home that day, I was emptied, trying to digest the humble pie that I was force-fed. My identity had been stolen. And then came the unexpected epiphany-- a song on the local gospel radio station: Hezekiah Walker’s God Favors Me. God certainly was all I had. I wondered what would have happened if I had stormed out of that Inquisition and quit that job. What if behind my wife’s loving support there was the very real disappointment that I had acted selfishly and not considered the family’s best interests. But God-- the one I knew, who had squeezed his omnipotence into the seemingly impossible frail frame of an infant, the one who knew humiliation and temptation so much more powerfully than I, the one whose experience of humanity’s fickleness and cowardice meant Crucifixion less than a week after public exaltation-- he would never leave me. I had an identity that I had taken for granted for so many years.
When Pilate told Christ that he had the power to release him or to crucify him, Jesus was not lacking in sincerity when he asserted that Pilate would have had no power over him were it not granted him from above. The reality of who I was and who was in control--these were precious gifts granting me confidence, delivered through humiliation.
When Pilate told Christ that he had the power to release him or to crucify him, Jesus was not lacking in sincerity when he asserted that Pilate would have had no power over him were it not granted him from above. The reality of who I was and who was in control--these were precious gifts granting me confidence, delivered through humiliation.
So this time when I stood up and said that it was over, that I had enough, that I could no longer go through this, it wasn't pride nor weakness, it was simply that I knew who I was in spite of what was said, and that I needed to put faith in a future not controlled by a poorly managed little private school and its questionable ethics. I did not feel grand or grandiose in my departure with no illusions that without me, the school would suddenly crumble or ever crumble, or even experience a little "miss you Dr. K" crack, with no hope that my enemies would sooner or later succumb to their own disastrous descents. I only knew that life was so much more than how others defined me or what I was doing, so much more than a job, so much more than how much money I ever made or lost.
So I am much better off than I was four years ago, although the reality that comes with less money is a constant combatant with the reality of spiritual worth and well-being.
But should I feel better off? Perhaps such contentment given my economic condition is exactly what a true American should never feel. At least according to Ross Douthat.
But should I feel better off? Perhaps such contentment given my economic condition is exactly what a true American should never feel. At least according to Ross Douthat.
An interesting article in the Op Ed Section of the Times (Sunday September 30, 2012) by Ross Douthat entitled “Obama’s New Normal,” suggests that the reason Obama might win in November despite the current economic conditions is that Americans have become satisfied with “merely treading water.” Douthat goes on to argue that this settling for less (what the Stoics of old would have praised as a singular virtue) will irreparably harm future generations unless each American's sensitivity to economic conditions can be reanimated. Douthat feels that “American voters should be asking for more than an economy in which stagnation is the best that we can hope for, and the American dream just means barely getting by.”
So my contentment is really unpatriotic if I am not demanding more money. On the other hand, where has Mr. Douthat been living for the last few decades? Doesn't he know that at least by the 90's survival had become the new success? Was it only recently that he noticed that a great deal of hard-working Americans have not seen even incremental improvements in their finances for such a long long time?
Today, however, there may be a more optimistic answer, and one that for all my glass-half-empty analyses , I am willing to consider: maybe a good number of Americans have determined that life is simply not all about economics. Maybe it really is no longer all about “The Economy Stupid!” It has been so long since FDR’s success, and so many things have happened: the 60’s ignited freedom of expression against an unnecessary war only to leave behind a breaking of boundaries for the sake of breaking boundaries-- divorce rates and uncensored art even in Prime Time and music with Parental Advisories on the label; the 70’s killed any child-like faith in the integrity of the Presidency as we watched as Nixon skulked unceremoniously into the oblivion that arrives in the aftermath of disgrace; the 80’s gave us the hope that the Reagan Deal, the release of the wealthiest Americans from their economic manacles and the proclamation of old-school patriotism would allow the waters of abundance to pour over the sides of the golden chalices and satisfy middle class thirst and maybe even dispense a few unused drops for the enjoyment of the poor; the 90‘s confirmed that freedom and democracy and all the isms that go with being a real American were all about economics; and the 10‘s demonstrated that the world hates America, is fertile with terror, and that the deserving aristocrats in whom we had placed such financial trust were rogues in disguise whose lack of federal regulation would produce the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.
Maybe American workers have learned to be happy in spite of the fact that their real wages buy less than they did fifty years ago. For all the many economic theories and policies, that remains the bottom line-- less today than fifty years ago. Maybe money has become a necessary evil instead of a fundamental good in a life in which family, friends, religious affiliations, high school loyalties, music, art, and learning as much as possible have all taken a more central position.
Maybe Americans in spite of politics and economics have redefined the American Dreams not as the Manifest Destiny to possess land or money or power but to risk the contemplative journey of the soul in which success is in the formulation and reformulation of intellectually stimulating ideas and in the exchange of these ideas in any number of social fora from the old town-hall meeting to the social network. There is no shame in this-- perhaps it would be ever the more perilous if, instead of the economic stagnation bemoaned by the economist, we would ultimately find ourselves spiritual and intellectual derelicts who in lieu of reassessing and then reaffirming our humanity in the face of less than ideal circumstances, allow politics and economics to reshape us into something we were never meant to be.
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