View from the North 40: The argument for poor, inspirational me

In a depressing accident of birth, like big feet and a location in southern something-not-Montana listed as my birthplace, I was born without a silver spoon.

I would be an awesome rich person — generous, fun-loving, laid back, definintely not uppity, a philanthropist, for sure. Of course, I would be born WITH money in my scenario. Not make it. That’s an important point here.

I’ve never been much of one for actually making money. I think that has to do with the whole accident of birth thing that I don’t have that drive for dinero, gusto for greenbacks, must-have for moola, do-it for dough.

Some people, unkind people, narrow-minded people, might say I’m lazy, but I think I have a skill-set, an asset.

Not everybody is comfortable letting other people do work. I like to say that I am not actually afraid of hard work. I can sit and watch if for hours.

This is an important attribute because many people find fulfillment in completing tasks, or even discover for the first time that fulfillment can come from such activity.

Fulfillment of this manner is called self-actualization. It is the very top realm of the stages in the development of humankind as individuals, eventually as a community or a culture.

I am the facilitator of this amazing transformation … because I sit.

I sit and allow others to become all that they can be. It sounds great, but it doesn’t pay well.

This brings us back to the accident of birth. I was born already in possession of self-actualization. I am, essentially, a fourth-generation, 1 percenter-level rich person born to a poor family of … what are they called? Oh, yes, working-class citizens.

Fate has been cruel.

I am not down-trodden person, feeling lacking in myself or my place in the universe. I am not that person’s money-obsessed child who becomes a first generation, rich and powerful success to right that poverty-stricken wrong.

I am not that person’s child who is weighed down by the burden to live up to the parent’s successful example.

I am not that person’s third-generation, free-loading child, obsessed with privilege, a person selfishly thinking a lifestyle is owed to her, only to squander the money on an illicit lifestyle captured graphically in the tabloids.

No, I am, at heart the kinder, gentler, more conscientious, fourth-generation 1 percenter, fully aware of my noblesse oblige to support those around me, to seek ways in which my money could enhance the lives of others, to help them help themselves.

It’s a kindness that I would be able to hire others to discover themselves through hard work. I would pay well for this opportunity, if only I’d had the rich great-grandparents to have made that possible.

Such is life, and I find myself disturbing my inner peace with activities known to the world under such terms as “work” and “toil” and “long hours” and “job” and “half-rate effort, so do it again.”

I feel as if I have taken a step backward in life, slid back down the hill of self-actualization to some no-man’s land of labor where I do not belong and never needed to be.

I shall simply have to persevere, I guess, until the lottery pays off.

(In other words, I wish I could just pay someone to design, build and decorate my new home. All this working and, y’know, thinking — especially this thing called “thinking ahead” — is exhausting at [email protected].)