An Embarrassment of Riches

It really is the little things. A comfortable bed, clean sheets, and a soft pillow. A thermostat set just right, so that you can walk around your house in bare feet all year long. The wonder of turning on your faucet, day or night, and pure, cool water coming out. Opening up your refrigerator and realizing you get to choose between, count 'em, two different breakfast meats. Life is good here in the Done by Forty household. Which would be a lot easier to enjoy if it weren't for news stories like these, about the homeless living in tent cities spread all around Silicon Valley. Or these, about the hundreds of thousands of Syrian children refugees, who have to do backbreaking labor in potato fields to support their displaced families. Don't click those links if you're already in a good mood today.

Did you check the videos out? Depressing, right? Stories of poverty have an annoying way of ruining my day. As if the impoverished weren't inconsiderate enough already, they have the gall to go around, being all poor, in front of everyone, getting reported on in the media instead of politely obscuring themselves from the public eye, and generally making the rest of us share in their misery. Forget about personal finance education or job skills: someone needs to teach the poor some flipping manners. (Mrs. Done by Forty thinks it is important for me to point out that the preceding paragraph was sarcastic. I believe, reader, that you are sharp and already knew that. But I learned long ago to trust my wife's counsel. She is usually right.)

So why do I watch the PBS NewsHour, anyway? I swear those two news anchors are conspiring daily to make me feel bad things. Middle class guilt. White guilt. It is a smorgasbord of liberal self-torment from six to seven each evening, leading to a predictable emotional cycle. Cliché as it is, I feel it all the same. Through the wonders of technology, I see people who are having a tough time of things, then wonder why I am so lucky and why they are not, and then I feel bad. Not so bad as to actually do anything because, you know, poverty is complex and I have to work in the morning. Plus, I'm only one person and, hey, look, an episode of New Girl. Let's have some tea. Maybe a slice of pie, enjoyed on our comfortable furniture, while we watch sitcoms magically beamed down into my house from a satellite in freaking outer space. 

Like Louie C.K. asks, who the hell do I think I am to deserve this life of incredible luxury? 

Of course, I am just complaining. And complaining about how good I have things, which is the very worst kind. If those farmworker kids in Lebanon could hear me, they'd pick up their farm tools with their tiny children hands, and bludgeon me to bits. But they are too busy limiting their life choices in a bean field to worry about this little blog.

These are the random thoughts I have when thinking of our finances, and where they are taking us. Our ever growing pile of wealth and why we have it. Each day and week and month, the pile grows bigger, and pushes us further and further away from the kind of suffering that other people, unluckier people, feel all the time. I don't want to feel the suffering, of course. That's kind of the point of getting this money: to gain security. Choices. Safety. Comfort. It feels good. And then sometimes it doesn't.

But complaining doesn't do any good, of course: for me or anyone else. The easy answer is to "do something". Volunteer? Donate? Vomit thoughts onto a blog and hope someone else gets off their tuchus? Your guess is as good as mine. Still, it seems the wealthier we become, the more different I get from those sad, poor people on the news, and the worse I feel about the wealth. Whatever the positives of this personal finance journey of mine are supposed to be (and there are many), I have zeroed in on a negative. 

*Photo is from ToGa Wanderings on Flickr Creative Commons.