Jewswithoutjobs's Blog

Given the depth of economic calamity confronting millions, maybe the Jews have something to share with new legions of the displaced. When you’re an outsider, sometimes all you can do is shrug your shoulders and laugh, perhaps mournfully, but laugh nonetheless. Problem is we also often have self esteem so tied up in economic success that any blow to the bank book is a blow to self image. So to balance humor and catastrophe calls on all one’s ability to appreciate irony. If there’s any hope it may lie in finding humor in calamity. It’s been our blessing and curse for generations. We just need to update the model. Somewhere between Life is Beautiful and Annie Hall, we just may find the Jewish Stimulus of 2010.

I was raised somewhere between the meticulous golf courses of Pebble Beach and the natural madness of Big Sur. I was drawn to the wild coast but would never stay, could never find solace in the uncertainty. While a force deep inside always drew me to that creative energy where I’d stand with charred redwoods at my back, salt spray pouring through the summer fog against my face, I’d always return to the predictability of fairways, to where I knew that the second followed the first as surely as the eighteen finished the day. I gravitated to the manicured consistency of green.

At age 10, I received a fellowship to an acting academy, my teachers seeing a useful outlet for the class clown. Yet during the performances, I’d feel the same churning in my belly that I would later feel standing at the mouth of the Big Sur River, watching cliffs crumble into the sea, massive breakers filling my head with the surf’s howl. The energy was too disquieting; I quit the acting company.

This allowed me to get to my newspaper route early enough to beat the other kids to the streets. I knew the rules here, where value was measured by the weight of the coins in my jeans. I remember the smell of oiled oak at the bank teller’s window and the ink-stamped dates of my deposits. The blue-hairs would cluck in appreciation, wagging their chins, complimenting me as concretely as the dimes I dumped before them. For much of my life, the only balance I knew was in my bankbook. I loved to see the interest grow. I was well primed for performance, achievement, and pursuit of the American Dream.

And although I followed the path that did in fact lead to great material rewards, most of them disappeared in a flash. I must have done something right, though, because somehow I’ve still got enough to not be bankrupt, to go for walks everyday, to have the luxury to whine about my plight over cappucino, and generally to have survived. But the main thing that’s kept me going is to look back and see I never could have been happy ENOUGH. The beauty and tyranny of the PURSUIT is like any other chase…you’re always on the treadmill.

So to all those of you who have suffered in your own way, it’s humbling to remember there’s nothing we can control but our attitude. To mash up John Lennon and Bob Dylan: Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans, and there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all

I always thought I was retired until I lost a carload of assets and suddenly I was unemployed. And since I’d managed to live a pretty sybaritic lifestyle, resting on my laurels (and my bank account), it’s been a bit of a comeuppance to need to make money. If you’re visiting this blog, you may have joined the ranks of the unemployed,which wishful thinking, or Ben Bernanke, would have us believe is merely a temporary bump in the road. But what does it mean if it is more permanent? Does that mean we just panic and give up? Maybe, feels that way sometimes.

The convergence of work and my sense of value is pretty strong, at least that’s what our culture, and our country teaches us. Jews have prospered in America in part because the christian founding fathers, unbeknownst to them, formulated the basis of our values and economic system in way that invited centuries of ingenuity, created on the outside of cultures, to have a home right here in the U S of A.

The egalitarian ideal that, “all you have to do is try” that “everything is possible” broke the barriers of class, religion, & heritage. It’s true that few of those folks, bargained for what they got. White anglo saxon christians being equal was one thing, but African Americans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Jews etc, weren’t really in the cards. But we all saw the opening, & reached for the brass ring.

And now to suddenly have that yanked out from under you seems like a giant cultural rip off. If you can’t succeed financially, what’s left?

Here’s the question: “is it possible to be gainfully unemployed?”   Let me know. Has anyone out there remade your life? Found any goodness in this new reality? Enjoyed the day?

Trust me, the Dalai Lama didn’t say this:

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”

For those of you not old enough to remember Groucho, I bet you still know who he is from the funny eyebrow & big schnoz masks that still pop up in costume stores. He was a marvel, a precursor to Woody Allen without the angst…And this quote seems to crystallize his ability to deal with the weirdness of being human.

It is funny, or sad, that knowing I have the total choice to be happy or not, how often I choose to be miserable. Especially with all the crap in the world. It’s great being an outsider, I’ve got a built in source to blame it all on! Celebrate. Think of all the people who have jobs, meaningful lives, great families, and they still complain…..at least we’re unemployed!