June 1, 2019 –
Paragraph 1. See introduction.
Paragraph 2. I remember so clearly the struggle I had not to become lazy and complacent. By any standards we were rich. I knew I had choices. I was enrolled in 4 advanced placement classes in an academically challenging private school. I didn’t know it then but I had mild dyslexia perhaps complicated by a pair of eyes that didn’t focus together (a condition called amblyopia, I was born with one crossed eye). I couldn’t catch a ball reliably. I read slowly. It would have been so easy to lie back and relax, become a “girly” girl like so many of my classmates were doing, Even so, learning was the game I was best at.
The very public conflicts my divorced parents had over money led me to my skeptical view of my potential earning power. My mother, who grew up sewing her own underwear on a chicken farm in upstate New York, had gotten into an extended custody battle over my brothers and me with my wealthy “Our Crowd” father 4 years ago. I still don’t know what details she kept from me but she made it perfectly clear that she went back to work because my bastard father cut her off, she was sacrificing for me and I was inadequately grateful. As you may read about later, my father was unsuccessful at disinheriting my adulthood self so, in complex ways, it turned out that my schooling really has not had much impact on my earning power or lifestyle.
It is significant that this early interest in the interaction among personal effort, job-related earning power and educational level has stayed so prominent in my mind that I am still writing about it. (See www.netaablog.wordpress.com)
Paragraph 3. I had just read Voltaire’s Candide for the first time. My preoccupation with appropriate use of superlatives is still with me as well.
Paragraph 4. I’m sure I hadn’t yet read Plato’s Republic so I expect the story of the cave was related to me by either parents or my older brother and his friends. I majored in philosophy in college and, to this day, consider myself a career “social philosopher”. Oh, the seeds we sew.
Paragraph 5. The school that I had been attending since second grade was nondenominational but certainly Christian in orientation. We were required to study both the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible and to attend morning chapel three days a week. I was familiar with Exodus 3:14. I had also been exposed to Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. But, looking back almost 60 years, I suspect my existential crisis was more closely related to my increasingly tumultuous relationship with my mother than either religion (which was strictly forbidden by both my atheist parents) or philosophical texts that I had heard about but not yet read. It’s ironic that gratitude is a hot topic among members of the “self-help” crowd today.
Paragraph 6. I’m still haunted by what I called ’ostentation’ at 15. At that time people used to accuse me of being ‘conceited’, of thinking I was somehow better than everyone else. In some senses they were right. By any objective measure I had been gifted with more than my fair share of musical, mathematical and literary talent for which I could claim no intentional merit. I hadn’t earned those gifts and I knew it. My peers were missing the fact that much of my bravado was compensation for low self-esteem. Further, my parents brought up the concept of ‘noblesse oblige’ with some frequency. I had been born into privilege and I would carry an obligation to give back all my life. They also demanded that I “carry myself” like the aristocrat I was supposed to be. It was 30 years before I learned enough about body language to stop striding into a room as if I owned it with a haughty expression on my face. And you’re reading this because I’ve given up secrets.