Not Sorry

Perpetual Butter Machine

Almost forgot: I’ll be in Montpelier tonight, speaking at this event. Come on down! 

Every so often, I get letters from folks who read this site. You know, on paper, in the mail, with a stamp, the way folks used to correspond across long distances before telephones and email and texting and Skype and whatever else all those crazy kids are doing these days. (I love saying stuff like “whatever else all those crazy kids are doing these days” because it makes me sound older and grumpier than I actually am)

I like getting these letters, if for no other reason than it’s rare enough to be an occasion – I think I’ve received maybe a total of 6 – but also because folks don’t generally make such an effort unless they have something nice to say. So I get the novelty, and I get to read something complimentary. Maybe someday I’ll get a nasty letter, and that’ll be ok, too. I already know what I’ll do with it: I’ll use it to start a fire in the woodstove.

I got a letter yesterday, and it was very nice. I was struck by this line: “You seem to sneak in vague apologies on your blog about how you have chosen to live your life  – these thoughts need not be repeated because as I see it you and your lifestyle are to be commended.”

At first I was a little puzzled: I don’t think of myself as apologizing for how I have chosen to live my life. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how one (Susan is her name; Hi, Susan!) might get such an impression and where it might come from.

To be clear, I do not feel the need to apologize for how I live my life. But I do feel the need to acknowledge, perhaps more often than is strictly necessary, the reality that so many people do not enjoy the same freedoms and privileges my family and I do. The reasons for this might be circumstantial, or they might be self-inflicted. It might just be because they did what they believed was the right thing to do, and now they find themselves trapped by obligations – most often, to the unforgiving master known as debt – that seem insurmountable.

I do not think that everyone wants to live like we do, nor do I think they should, but I do believe that some people are not able to live as they want to, and that bothers me. And I see how so many of the factors that enable us to live as we want to live could be chalked up to simple good luck. Don’t get me wrong: We have worked hard to craft this way of life. We continue to work hard. But even that hard work and our inherent love of that work is our privilege, our damn good luck, and understanding it as such makes me feel a certain empathy for those struggling to align their ideas for what defines a meaningful life with the reality of living that life.

I suppose that what Susan perceives as apologizing, I perceive as simply acknowledging the truth of all the privileges and good fortune my family and I enjoy. I think it’s important to acknowledge these things; for starters, they are not invulnerable. I ain’t seen much, but I’ve seen enough to know that the world is a fickle place, and that what may seem certain today could be uncertain by tomorrow. Or even sooner. There’s a part of me that guards against taking anything we have for granted, even though there’s another part of me that doesn’t really want to spend all my waking hours reminding myself to not take anything for granted, if only because that could get sort of exhausting.

Anyway, thanks for the letter, Susan. I intend to write back. Or maybe I just did.