I Won the Lottery

That title is just carefully worded trickery. Now that I have your attention, I did not win the state-run game of chance in Illinois. I never even came close. But when I did buy a ticket I was always filled with a level of apprehension that approached dread.

I did not want to win.

You may have heard stories about lottery winners, the majority of them, who have had their lives ruined subsequent to a major lottery windfall. It’s not hard to imagine why, because money doesn’t buy happiness, right?

Picture the newspaper article and photograph in which you’re holding up a six-foot long fake check made out to you, your name mentioned by a reporter and displayed as a matter of public record. Then imagine your mailbox overflowing with heart-wrenching requests for financial assistance, charitable causes, opportunities for investments, pitches by realtors and financial advisors with offers to “help” you deal with your newly found riches.

Next to arrive are the phone calls and emails. Those who have that information come first, but inevitably some clever hacker will locate you online (it’s not hard) and open the floodgates of Hell. You’ll need to change both addresses and possibly move. Friends and family will develop a barely discernable new relationship with you. The good ones won’t, but finding the bad actors will be painful, like randomly extracting teeth to get at the rotten one.

Something as simple as going out to dinner with another couple might accompany the expectation that you always pay for the meal. After all, you’re a multi-millionaire, right? The ones who offer to pay will be suspect of attempting to influence your undoubtedly generous tendencies, playing the long game, and taking you down a rabbit hole that leads to trust issues, especially if you’re already prone to them.

No, first you need to hire a contractor. Design and build a safe room on your existing house. In it, you will construct a throne, gilded in gold leaf, or perhaps of solid gold. But maybe save the large outlay of cash for the other throne where you’ll read copies of Fortune and Money. At your throne you will grant audiences with the groveling masses, weighing their wants versus needs and doling out small portions of your wealth on the second Tuesday of each month. Your man Jeeves will interview candidates and make appointments when he’s not waxing the Lamborghinis. In other words, live like Bill Gates. 

Stop! Do you see what’s happening? Lottery fantasies! Your road to perdition is being paved and you haven’t yet received your first payment. Note: monthly payouts are preferable to a single lump sum for tax reasons. Again, stop!

What many of us at any at any level of financial means sometimes lack is a concept of “enough.” I know that there are desperately poor people in our country. Did you know that 2 million people in the U.S. lack access to drinking water? Are you aware that 11.9 million children in the U.S. live in poverty? It’s sickening, and I would gladly pay any amount of taxes to make that go away. But then, accused of being a bleeding heart liberal I’m aware that half of Americans would not join me in that cause.

But this article is for my small group of Facebook friends. They all live in homes, have water, electricity, food, clothing, telephones, a computer and Internet access. Considering where we came from not that long ago, we live like kings.

I recently wrote about my realization that I won the Privilege Lottery. I was just born American, white and male in the Twentieth Century. I’m happy to debate that one on one, but based on the almost complete lack of feedback to my article, I entered uncomfortable geography. And of course we also earned what we have through long, hard work or lack thereof.

But it was at Disney World a few months ago, just before the world shut down, that a stranger made a comment that really stuck with me. I was washing my hands in the men’s room at the Yacht Club Resort, about to enjoy a delicious breakfast at Ale & Compass restaurant. Now, I’m fully aware that talking to someone in the bathroom is not cool, but a Black pastor stepped up to the sink beside me to wash his hands. Did it matter that he was Black? No. Did it matter that he was a pastor. I think it did.

            “Good morning,” I said.

            “Good morning,” he replied, “How are you?”

            “I’m great, how are you”

            “Better than I deserve,” he said.

“Better than I deserve.” How many of us can say that? How many of us should be saying that?

As I approached retirement I had another short conversation with a retired gentleman a few years older than me. He was consulting at our company. Oddly enough, we were returning from the bathroom, that catalyst of deep thinking, at least in my experience.

            “So, Tom, tell me about Social Security. Take it early or wait?” I asked.

            “Take it. A friend of mine waited and died before collecting a penny.”

The very sad outcome of this exchange is that Tom had terminal cancer, which he discovered within weeks. He died six months later. I know of numerous others who continued to work, stretching for that ever-moving goal of “enough” only to wind up disabled or dead before arriving.

My mother died at age fifty-five. My father died at fifty-nine. They never enjoyed a minute of retirement. So when my wife had brain surgery to correct an aneurysm, also at age fifty-five, any rumination we’d discussed about our future sharpened to crystal clarity. With some careful planning and a willingness to move cross-country, we felt we had enough to be very comfortable.

It is hard to be far from family and lifelong friends. It is challenging to share one car. But most things considered, I realize that we are lucky to enjoy each day, each other and a future for which we remain hopeful. Waking up in the morning is a good thing. I am thankful, grateful and often humbled as aging reminds me that I am not the man I used to be. But then again, if you ask me how I’m doing, I now reply, “Better than I deserve.”

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.

 

 

 

Got Privilege?

In order to free ourselves from racial prejudice we first need to rise above our nature as tribal creatures. You think you’re not tribal? Look in the mirror. What do you see?

In my case, the reflection is a white, male, heterosexual, Baby Boomer, Lutheran, American of Swedish ancestry and graduate of the University of Illinois. This doesn’t account for political affiliation, employer, fraternity, sports team preference or other organizations I’ve joined.

Which of your many tribes would you fight and die for? I know Green Bay Packer fans that would take up arms to defend their identity. I would fight for my country and my family, but doubt very much that I would jump into a trench for U of I or Sweden. But at some level, when push comes to shove we need to feel superior to someone else. It’s sadly just the way humans are wired.

I now live in a place some continue to view as part of the former Confederacy. The news is currently filled with images of that reconciliation. I recently drove behind a truck that was plastered with Confederate emblems and flying an actual flag from the rear bumper, as if to say, “I continue to stand for the wrong-headed, traitorous movement that lost the Civil War.” But that’s judgmental. It’s their tribe, and as another flag they like to wave from an earlier war aggressively states, “Don’t Tread on Me!”

We also need to gain an understanding of the privileges many of us take for granted –white, male or otherwise.

My only experience as a minority was during a month I spent volunteering for Earthwatch in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was considered a “Haole” (how-lee.) This is a term usually applied by native Hawaiians or Polynesians to Caucasians. It is not necessarily derogatory, depending on context, but it is often negative. It was an eye opener that kept me on my guard. Living there permanently would mean adjusting to the notion of always being viewed as an outsider, with limitations on my rights and sidelong glances from those who dislike me without knowing me. But at the end of the month I was able to simply fly back to my privileged place on the Mainland and resume where I’d left off. Even police can take off their uniforms at day’s end and get a break from scrutiny. But people of color cannot for a minute remove their skins.

I am surprised that the 1964 film  Black Like Me  has not been pulled out of the archives and re-popularized. Based on a true story, actor James Whitmore plays reporter John Griffin, who went through treatments to darken his skin for a six week tour of the southern United States in the 1950s. It is the ultimate blackface experience and well worth watching.

I’ve encountered a wall of denial built around my white male friends. The suggestion that we have benefited from white privilege, particularly as males, sometimes triggers a defensive response. They point to a life of hard work (earned privilege) and a less than privileged upbringing. Everyone I know lived in a home with one or more working parents. That is privileged in itself. This generally leads into a discussion about how those less fortunate need to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps and stop living off of the welfare state funded by our taxes.”

            “But they might not have boots, or straps,” I say.

Speaking in metaphors is never a good way to advance a debate. And failure of my friends to recognize that they benefit from an invisible collection of social assets is not their fault. Privilege itself is not their fault. We have been taught to be oblivious to our advantages. But failing to acknowledge those privileges is definitely our fault.

I am fully aware that I benefited from being a white male early in my career and in life (unearned privilege). As a young man in my early twenties I was able to stroll into a bank and secure a mortgage, having only recently graduated from college. The house I mortgaged was in an affluent north suburb of Chicago. I felt safe in my neighborhood and had pleasant neighbors. There was almost no crime. My high school class that numbered around 1200 had one Black student. I didn’t know him, but those who did said he was a great guy. What must his life have been like? The other 1199 students in our class looked like us. Our teachers looked like us. At the end of the day we turned on the television and saw people that looked like us. Our entire world looked like us. We took it for granted.

I waltzed into college, able to afford the cost and without much in the way of scholastic credentials. Most of my friends had help from their parents. We were not the first in our families to pursue higher education. We were financially and intellectually privileged. I was raised by two parents, with a father who was present and a life free from generational poverty, substance abuse and violence.

I later applied for and was promoted within a large corporation without much effort. I worked hard, but hard work is entirely separate from the privilege that eased my journey. Had I been openly gay, an entire spectrum of privilege would have been snatched away from me.

And then came the day when my company rolled out an initiative that included hiring percentages for women and minorities. The rug of privilege was suddenly seemingly pulled out from under me. The corporate ladder had a few new rungs upon which I was not allowed footing. I challenged what I considered “quotas” and in a meeting with a Black, female HR representative the new reality was firmly but politely made clear. I was handed a booklet on affirmative action and sent on my way. But before I left, that very nice young lady asked me:

            “Can you imagine what it’s like to feel that people assume I got my job because of my race or gender, or to have to work twice as hard as someone else to be considered for a job?”

I couldn’t imagine that. Her comment spoke to the essence of being unprivileged.

Politicians as far back as Nixon have employed a “Southern Strategy” of focusing on racial issues to gain votes from a fearful white working class. It’s a real vote getter, but as our national demographics evolve the strategy is beginning to backfire. The assumption is that a gain in privilege by one race is part of an equation that results in a loss by another. Is that true? Is privilege a social currency that can neither be created nor destroyed – it just changes hands? Or can we learn to share?

Every so often our society lurches forward in a spasm that seems like a great awakening to those of us who were asleep at the wheel. Changes come quickly, two steps forward, and are often met with eventual resistance when things get uncomfortable, one step back. There can be collateral damage when boundaries extend into the marginal gray zones. The #MeToo movement tapped into a sweeping “cancel culture” that may have disproportionately held a few people overly accountable, but mostly not. This is a literal push coming to shove that bumps up against our tribal personal bubble.

            “They tore down which statue? Well, that’s not right.”

            “Al Franken resigned? But he was just joking!”

            “Change the name of the Redskins? Why? That seems silly.”

            “Aunt Jemima is a wonderful childhood memory. Gee whiz.”

            “Black lives matter.”

            “Blue lives matter.”

            “All lives matter.”

Silly perhaps to some, but not to others. After all, cultural appropriation is nothing new. European Whites demanded it of Native Americans. Speak our language. Adopt our traditions. This land is our land…now.

If you read any amount of honest history you’ll find that much of this is not at all new. The rich have always needed the poor to generate their wealth. The rich amass power, become leaders, draft legislation and pass laws that benefit their position. Having become privileged they are not about to give it up. Those of us in the shrinking center enjoy our relative comfort and level of privilege. And we don’t want to lose it either. We’re part of a tribe called the Middle Class.

Darwin might say that tribalism carried with it genetic survival value. Competition between tribes over preferred resources, land and mates undoubtedly resulted in a stronger tribe and possibly a more diverse and healthier gene pool. But just as we eventually evolved language, religion, a conscience, moral values and laws, hasn’t the time come to eliminate the barriers that prevent us from viewing each other as members of a single human tribe? Maybe not yet, and perhaps not even very soon, but we can be hopeful for the future and begin to lay the foundation and framework for a time when that inevitably comes to pass.

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.