Blah, blah, blah… I’ve got the blahs.
Rant
Expectations and Drive
1On the way to work yesterday, I heard a story on NPR about India. They were discussing how there is such a fine line between rich and poor in that country, and were interviewing an Indian man who is very poor. He and his wife scrape every penny they can from their earnings for tuition for their three year old daughter. “I pray every day that she can lift her family out of poverty,” he said.
My first reaction was to feel sorry for this little girl who has all of these expectations on her before she even knows anything about the world. Her family is essentially placing all their hope on her, that she can find success enough for the whole family. This is common enough throughout the world, and similar stories have played themselves here in the United States. It’s certainly a large burden placed on her little shoulders.
However, as I thought about it more, I looked at it from the other side. This man and his wife are doing everything they possibly can to ensure their daughter has a brighter future, a better life than they did. They work hard to give her the opportunities that they didn’t have. And, while there is a great burden on her, it is only because her family loves her so much to do all they can to make her life the best that they can possibly make it. They have a drive and desire to better her life.
And I wondered about the US and how it just doesn’t feel like we have that drive any more. We are content with what we have. We have good lives, especially in comparison to this Indian family, but we don’t have the drive to be any better. My generation is possibly the first in the US that is overall worse off than our parents. We don’t have the ambition to make something better of ourselves. We are content to be where we are.
My dad, and my mom’s grandparents, came to this country to better themselves and their lot in life. They gave up everything they knew, all that was comfortable, to go to a foreign land where they didn’t speak the language, to engage in work that they knew little about, all for the promise of a better life. And, while my mom and dad didn’t place any undue burdens on me, didn’t push me to be anything more than what I wanted to be, they worked hard to ensure I had the chances to do exactly that, be what I wanted to be.
I look around and I see families that have no desire for a better life, no desire to improve their lot. Their life was good enough for their parents and their grandparents before them, and it will be good enough for their children. I think that, to some extent, that’s why education is not as highly valued here as I would hope. Parents don’t care all that much.
I’m very proud of how hard my parents worked to give me the best chances in life that they could. And, while that little Indian girl has some very large expectations placed on her, it’s only because her family wants what’s best for her too. I wish we all had a bit of that drive, a bit of that want to better ourselves, to better our lives. It is that kind of drive that made the US the great nation that it is and I fear that maybe we’ve lost it.
Opportunity in America
1During the health care debate, one thing that has been a talking point is that the people who are on the lower end of the economic ladder are there at least primarily due to faults and errors of their own. This is an inherent assumption of the American Dream: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Everyone has the ability to pursue their own happiness and, the implication is, if they do not obtain it, it is a result of their own failings, primarily a lack of effort.
At the same time, however, it seems to me that some amount of failure has to be built in to the system. That is, the system cannot sustain itself if everyone is successful in realizing their dreams, of obtaining their happiness. There has to be some, even a majority of us, that fail in becoming doctors, lawyers, or whatever they dreamed of in their youth. We can’t all be at the top of the economic ladder, or better said pyramid. For the economy, for society function, we need people who end up in those jobs that none of us want, that we don’t aspire to, but are sometimes forced into by circumstances. We need the sanitation workers, the slaughter house workers, the assembly line workers. They are absolutely crucial to our system functioning. But, I dare say, these are typically not jobs we aspire to, jobs that were part of our dream when we were “pursuing our happiness.”
Any individual can pursue their happiness, to varying degrees of ability, opportunity, and circumstance. But, most of us have to fail. Most of us have to give up on those dreams in order to survive. The economic pyramid has to be bottom heavy to function, and none of us aspires to be at the bottom.
I understand that our system in no way guarantees that we obtain happiness, just that we are able to pursue it. However, that most of us must fail, suggests to me that we who do succeed are not entirely free from any responsibility for those who do fail. We depend on them, we require them, for a functioning economy. Therefore, it seems that we should realize that failure to obtain our happiness is not entirely on our own shoulders, but is also a part of the system. It will happen to most of us, the system ensures that. As a society, we have some responsibility to make sure those people have some basic standards of living, including health care.
Priorities
0The other day, listening to ESPN Radio on the way to work, they had an auction to raise money for the V Foundation. I don’t know much about it, but it’s something started by Jimmy Valvano, a I believe college basketball coach who was diagnosed with cancer and started this to fight back. This was in the mid 90s, maybe 94 or 95. The talk show guys mentioned how, since the foundation started, it has raised $80 million for cancer research.
The next segment was Sports Center and it was reported that some player (don’t remember the sport) had either just signed or was in negotiations for a contract worth $60 million over how ever many years, something like 5.
$80 million over 15 for cancer research and $60 million over 5 for one guy to throw a ball around. It sometimes feels like our priorities are really screwed up.
To be fair, this $80 million isn’t the whole amount devoted to cancer research in the last 15 years, just what this one foundation has raised. And the $60 million isn’t the player’s fault. It’s mine as much as anyone’s, as I’m into the whole professional sports thing, watching the games, playing fantasy football, and owning a couple of jerseys.
But, still…
Airplane woes
0After the news of the crashes of the planes going from Brazil to France and from France to Comoros, it seems one should be greatful whenever their flight arrives at its destination and that “minor” inconveniences that result in “just” delays are not so important in the big scheme of things. And that is probably true. But, when we returned from Idaho to Santa Fe via Las Vegas, our delay in Vegas was so bizzare that I feel it is worth sharing.
We were on a direct flight between Boise and Albuquerque, stopping in Vegas but we didn’t have to get off. We got there a little early because of favorable winds, I think, but when we landed, our gate was “broken” (that was the word they used) which caused a delay as they found us another gate. That took maybe 15 minutes or so. At the new gate, they unloaded the Vegas passengers and loaded up a full plane of people flying to Albuquerque and beyond.
And now the, to me, really bizarre part. We just stayed there, for nearly two hours, at the gate, just waiting. For what? No one said for maybe one hour, when they finally explained it to us. It seems that they are doing construction at the airport in Vegas, so the number of runways is reduced. It also seems that, depending on the wind direction, either one or the other of the two runways in service are used. Originally, we were to use one runway, which was fine, but then the wind shifted and we were then supposed to use the other runway. But, that runway has less clearance — it heads into some mountains — so the plane needs to be more powerful than on the other runway. Our plane, fully loaded, didn’t have the power to safely clear the mountains — it was overweight. So, they unloaded passengers who were only going through Albuquerque and about 2000 pounds of fuel. This took about 2 hours total. All of this was complicated, somehow, by the temperature, which was 110 F.
Through all of this, the flight crew was great. One of the pilots explained this to us, for which I was very greatful (I much rather be informed about what is going on than be kept in the dark) and one of the flight attendants even ran back to the concourse to get us some fresh milk for our daughter (who, incidentally, did very well considering she was cramped in the plane for an extra 2 hours). So, I really commend the crew.
What I don’t understand is the company and the airport. It seems to me that in a place like Vegas, this can’t be a rare occurance, that it gets hot, that the wind shifts, and that a flight is oversold and is at full capacity. And yet it took 2 hours to diagnose and fix the situation? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I wonder how often this does happen and if it always takes this long for them to fix the problem.
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