Stepping off the Treadmill

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. --Lily Tomlin

You might say I'm a perfect child of the age. Growing up in South Texas, a geography ripe for a car culture if ever there was one, my opportunities were afforded to me by a decades-old automotive repair family business. My Mexican-American heritage extends back into an ambiguous, foggy history but my mother's father sold cars and my father and his dad fixed them. The most recent immigrant in my family's story is my paternal grandfather. His is the iconic American immigrant story of a young man arriving here from Mexico during the Great Depression, pulling himself up by his bootstraps, creating a new destiny for himself and his family. I could sit awhile and wonder what my life would be like had my grandfather or father chosen other paths but there would be no point. I feel blessed and I think my life is better for their choices. That is all that matters. But our destiny has been inextricably linked to the dominance and proliferation of the vast American car culture, and the emergent hyper-consumerism by default. Where would I be without it? The timing of my birth also determined that I would reach adulthood at the dawn of the computer age. Even when I was finishing college, computer use was still in it's early years and the Internet use pre-mainstream. I wouldn't catch up until my late 20s. Far from lamenting this catching up, I am grateful to have experienced a childhood "off the treadmill". Certainly hyper-consumerism was just beginning to gain momentum when I was little, running around sweaty in the front yard with the neighborhood kids, itchy from the chigger bites. I have great memories of all the non-techie stuff we did in the name of fun and entertainment. My career in the kitchen began here, making "soup" in a bucket with water, stones, Pyracanthas berries, and twigs, and then serving dinner to my friends. I loved observing bugs and would stand astounded and squeamish with my brother in our periodic discovery of a swarm of army worms. I still have affection for the multitudes of "chicharras" we'd catch. They'd screech and then crawl on our arms with their scratchy little legs. There were "marathon" bike rides to my grandmother's house and building tree houses, exploring the "wilderness" areas surrounding my neighborhood. What we had was a surplus of imagination and old-fashioned human socialization with our playmates. We didn't have a monopoly on these experiences. Kids still enjoy these things today, in between the vast amounts of time playing video games, surfing the Internet, watching TV. At least they skateboard, right? I know you don't miss what you never had but I can't help feeling sorry for today's kids if they have parents who aren't making a concerted effort to nurture the natural children's impulse to actively play out in the natural world. In a sense, it feels to me like they are born on this treadmill of hyper-consumerism. Our marketing today is so much more pervasive, and intrusive. So much more of what they are exposed to is dependent upon advertising. I find it sadder still that it's all been intentional as part of a long-standing effort to objectify humans and regard families as "consumer units". Having been reduced to this lowest common denominator, we are misperceived to be beneficial to this economic system only in direct proportion to how much s**t we buy. I didn't hop on the treadmill until later in my life.

One of the best gifts my parents gave me was a no B.S. perception of reality. For whatever reason, my folks weren't wired to go down the typical parental path of endeavoring to give their kids all that they never had. They surely provided a lot of things but we were never spoiled. We never lacked for anything we needed. As far as what we wanted, that's another story. We knew early on that you had to work for what you got and what you got wasn't to be taken for granted. I would observe some friends and relatives who always got the coolest, latest toys. Being a kid, I felt envy. But my mom would tell me that we were poor, and though I never felt poor, those words significantly reduced my expectations for the amount of stuff I should be getting. I was old enough to comprehend how hard my parents worked and understood so that it didn't create anxiety in me. I knew early on that this was something to be grateful for because by the time I was a pre-teen, I knew well that all that glitters was not gold when I began to hear stories of some materialistic, money-flaunting relatives whose home was in foreclosure. How can someone place so much importance in exhibiting signs of wealth when their family's security was at stake? That never made sense to me. It still does not and for all my experiences in life, I have never cared one bit about showing others that I have any wealth. And yet, for all the great values instilled in me by my parents, as adult, I still hopped on that treadmill.

Throughout my 20s, I had my consumerism in check. It was an occasional indulgence I shared with my best friend. Shopping is a form of female-bonding after all. I'd entered the credit card life but it was never something I took lightly and I never had any difficulty keeping my balance low. Another childhood memory of mine was joining the Colombia House record club, responding to the 12 albums for 1 penny promotion (something like that). I joined twice, once under an assumed name in case they had CIA agents perusing the applications for people like me. Already having been conditioned to prefer instant gratification, I'd go to the record stores and I would never order the tapes required to complete my commitment. Then I'd start getting the letters about how my time had expired and I owed "x" dollars. I would just ignore them. Somehow my mom found the letter and scolded me about being a deadbeat. Lesson learned. I never wanted to be shamed like that again. I didn't move to New York until I was already 30. I'd determined a couple years earlier that I wanted to go to culinary school and if I was going to do this thing, I wanted to do it all the way in a place where I'd get the most beneficial experience. I'd never had jobs that paid very well but I'd always been comfortable. My pastry instructors would laugh and ask what on earth I could've been doing for a living that could make a pastry job seem like a step up. Money has never been my motivator. Enjoying my work is of utmost importance. Life in New York is expensive, as everyone knows. Being enrolled in school, paying tuition, and earning a low wage makes it that much harder to maintain balance here. Thus began my debt-accumulation phase. Still, I didn't hop on the treadmill until I began to internalize my reality as a 30 something woman with a finite amount of time to find a mate, settle down, and start a family. I never had an issue with turning 30. My anxiety emerged gradually, not regarding my age but my diminishing opportunities. Most people at some point confront this realization that "this isn't the life I imagined for myself". While I was figuring out why I didn't have the life I'd imagined in my youth and going about my efforts to correct that, I sank into a pit of insecurity that relied on shopping to bolster my feelings of inadequacy. Mind you, I have always been pretty moderate in my spending. It was not that I had marathon shopping sprees or bought things that were high-end. I have never had any compulsion to spend $800 on shoes or handbags, or even $200. But let's be honest, if I'd been living within my means, I'd have no debt right now. It has been mostly a quiet and steady accumulation of debt, impulsive and unnecessary purchases here and there. This makes me feel cute, skinny, and then the seasons change and I find my clothes from last season don't make me feel that way anymore. I want a fresh hit. It feels good to tell yourself "yes" when you perceive Life telling you "no". And let me tell you, the seasons change fast and when you think it's your appeal to the opposite sex that is creating this obstacle to getting on with your life in a city reputed to have 3 women for every man--you work what you got or don't got, if it comes down to money, and you charge it instead. And I am a confident person for the most part. We all have insecurities but I'm not the person you'd guess is battling with issues like this. I'm the one who's got it together, can take care of herself, perhaps even to the point where it might intimidate lesser men. As far as egos go, mine is mostly in check, at least enough so that I feel lucky that my experience with hyper-consumerism was a temporary fix and has been fairly benign in my life. It has not been benign to the planet or the people of developing countries where almost all of the things I've purchased have come from in our globalized economy. That weighs on me greatly. My emotional healing should not come at any one's expense. But I can look back on those errant relatives, flaunting their "wealth" and hiding their foreclosure and recognize a much more deep-rooted and hopeless effort to show the world "Look at me. I'm successful. I'm worthy. I have value." They are the wounded people who never discovered their true selves, having confused the stuff with who they are. And there I feel is the crux of our problem. As long as we as a society continue to trade authenticity for the store-bought facade of worthiness in an effort to fill that emotional hole left when community and meaning diminished from our lives, we are not likely to adopt a new paradigm that values more than economic growth. This is history for me. I woke up from that delusion. And what I've noticed in the last couple of years is that all the things I was anxious about--Will I find that person to settle down with? Will I have a family?--they weren't even things I really fundamentally wanted. I just wasn't comfortable with losing the opportunity. I have spent a lot of years on this treadmill, working two jobs at times in my effort to pay down my debt. I have no problem with my bills but I hate having the debt lurking over my head. When I realize how many of my worked hours go towards paying down this debt, I see how much free time I've lost.

I'm stepping off the treadmill now. My inner life doesn't have any use for all this stuff anymore. I'm in the best shape physically I have been in for a number of years and getting better. I don't feel inadequate. I feel inspired and passionate about becoming more engaged in the world and working to find small ways to contribute. I am excited about the opportunities disguised in a very ominous future. I discovered along the way that if I fill that hole with meaning, action, and a perspective that focuses outward on what I can offer the world rather than feeling like things are being done to me, I am happier and I don't reach for the false comfort of things, or unhealthy foods for that matter. I was born off the treadmill and I had an early life filled with authenticity. I count myself lucky that I am turning my life around now when I've only invested some of my life into this hyper-consumerist lifestyle. It is not lost on me that I owe so much of my family's success and my personal opportunities to this aberrant American lifestyle. I have thrived in it and I neither feel guilty for having done so nor do I blame the rest of society for having done the same. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But, that was then and this is now. I can not claim ignorance anymore. So I am moving towards real wealth, a sense of purpose, simplicity, and vitality that I have not experienced...ever. But it's baby steps. I am only just beginning so I don't want to hold myself up as a model of anything. I wouldn't want to do that even if I could because it assumes I have all the answers. I can always learn more. I have a whole unlearning of a lifestyle to do and I have to do it in a society that is still continuing business-as-usual. But I'm on my way.