Scratching the Surface of the Good Stuff

“Good morning Louise.”

“Good morning Miss Elisa. Beautiful weekend?”

“Yes, indeed,” she said so genuinely that you felt the purity of her response as a smile was ignited upon her face.  “And yourself? How are the children?”

“Wonderful.  They got to go to the beach and John is teaching them how to surf.  It seems like they had a good time, so maybe this will become a new hobby of theirs.  You know, get them out of my hair for a little bit.”

            Elisa Herron forced an uncomfortable chuckle as if she were offering some kind of condolence to Louise.  Their nearly seven year marriage was rocky and Louise never went more than a day without complaining about her kids, or her husband, or her life.  Unhappy as she was, Elisa thought she was pleasant to work with and never minded hearing her stories.  Louise married her husband John when she was young, only 22.   He is the tall, dark, and handsome type- a wealthy entrepreneur that comes from an affluent family who has resided in Los Angeles for at least six generations.  He is athletic, great with kids, and very loving.  Louise loves him too, but makes it known that she married him for the security of the white picket fence that surrounds their house.  Now at 29, Louise often grapples with the toxic “what ifs” that fill a person’s voids with regret.  She secretly envies the life Elisa lives.

            Me. I’m Elisa.  I recently graduated from UCLA and am only one semester away from earning my Master’s degree.  I have a great job that allows flexibility and the opportunity to travel.  As I arrive to work on an unusually warm October morning, I breathe a sigh of relief.  She must have missed the dark circles under my eyes.  Either that, or I did a really great job of applying my makeup this morning.  Putting my stuff down in my office, I pull out my chair and sit at my gorgeous mahogany stained desk.  My chair is one of those typical black office chairs-you know, the padded ones that swivel and lean back.  I adjusted the seat height to the highest level, even though sometimes I can’t see the top of my computer screen because it is blocked by the overhanging cabinets.  Sitting up tall makes me feel like I can accomplish anything and I find that here at my desk is where I am most successful in completing tasks. 

On the left flat of the desk is a lucky bamboo plant graciously given to me by one of my clients.  Hmph. I smile and shake my head.  If I had actually believed in luck, I might have thrown that plant away weeks ago.  But, there it sat.  The luckiness waiting to emerge.  Delicately taken care of, its’ lush green leaves positioned near the place in the office that received the most indirect sunlight.   I read somewhere that bamboo plants, in order to thrive and grow, need the warmth of the sun and rejuvenation from water.  There’s no way I’m letting it die.

The office space stays pretty neat.  Behind the bamboo in the corner are all the files of the projects that need to be worked on this year.  To anyone else but me, it looks like I’ve got my life pretty much in order.  I look organized.  I guess people think that I get up, go to work, do my homework, go to class, go home and fall asleep.  That’s a pretty accurate assumption of my day, actually.  Only, I don’t technically have a home where I consistently lay my head at night.  But nobody knows.  I suppose it started about three years ago.  Fresh off a college graduation, I had really high hopes and big dreams about who I was going to be and what I was going to contribute to this world.  Never in those dreams did a global recession take place that would knock people  (myself included) to the ground over and over again, challenging our every little belief in whatever we all believed in: God, Buddha, the government, our education system, our families.  They say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.  But I can tell you, without a doubt, there are times where death seems like the strongest option.

Three Years Ago

            After having just graduated from college, I decided to take a job at a local coffee shop-just until I figured out what I was going to do with my life.  It’s funny, you know.  You spend four years in college taking classes in a specific major, intending to do one thing with your life. Or maybe intending not to figure it out until later. But either way, you are expected to know your career path once you finish.  That’s like the one and only question everyone asks you at your graduation party. 

“So Elisa, what are you going to do now?” 

And when you reply that you aren’t sure, they just look at you with pity and sympathy and say, “Oh, it’s ok. You’re young.  You have plenty of time to figure it out.”  But after your family and friends leave your party, they go their separate ways gossiping behind your back about what you could have been.  About what you should have been.  As if you don’t have all the time in the world that they just finished telling you that you do have.

“I can’t believe she’s working in the food industry!”

“Tell me about it- with a degree and everything? What a shame.”

They go on babbling about all the potential you have, about how intelligent you are, never really realizing that the world they lived in at 20 is not the same world you live in at 20.  Can you blame them?

            Let’s back up about fifty years.  During the second world war, people were taking any and all jobs necessary to survive.  No one was too good to clean houses or flip burgers or serve someone their coffee.  Work became an essential component of everyone’s daily lives.  Many of our grandparents took up trades and became apprentices in one specific area which they would most likely end up doing for the rest of their life.  Since then, there has been an economical shift and many industries started booming once again.  New technology became instantly available to the general public creating an abundance of new jobs- jobs that our grandparents never in their wildest dreams could have imagined would exist during their lifetime.  The emergence of the Internet as an immediate global encyclopedia has given younger generations access to information at the drop of a hat.  Instant gratification has become a way of life, as people flock to car dealerships and realtors to make sure they are keeping up with the Joneses. Or the Smiths.  Or whoever it is on their block that always gets the new stuff first.  Hell, they could afford it now.  And if they couldn’t, there was always a credit card.

            The public was unaware that the recession would have such a huge personal impact on them.  People lost everything faster than it took to charge it on that credit card.  Today, you take any job you can get.  It might not even be what you would consider a “real job.”  We’re talking about taking gigs that would normally be reserved for high school kids, like babysitting and delivering pizzas.  Not a day goes by that you don’t hear the story about the man making six figures as a car salesman five years ago who just filed for bankruptcy and had to sell his house for a loss.  Or about the woman with a Master’s degree who is cleaning houses and living paycheck to paycheck, wondering how she is going to put food on the table for her three beautiful children.  The recession has taught a lot of people about the value of a dollar and that hard work is the only way to make it through tough times.

            I never understood the need to have all the latest and most expensive items.  Perhaps it was because the words “instant” and “gratification” were never used together in the same sentence when I was growing up.  Or maybe it was because I consider myself to be one of the few people left in Los Angeles who actually tries to live within my means.  It’s pretty impossible though.  The people here mask their dire financial situations with the cars they drive and the expensive, trendy restaurants they frequent on the weekends.  One of the easiest and most dangerous things to do in Los Angeles is to get caught up in this superficial struggle to appear wealthier than you are.  And unfortunately, the world happened to enter this global economical recession.  How opportune.  Taking a job at a coffee shop might have been the kind of job that people here once looked down upon, especially since I have a college degree.  Alas, the economy doesn’t care about your fucking degree.

            So it’s 2007 and I work at a coffee shop.  Living in a house with five other college coeds makes it hard to fall asleep anytime before two in the morning.  When I moved in, I agreed to pay $200 to sleep on the couch because all the rooms were taken.  Two hundred bucks seemed like one hell of a deal for living in LA and there was no way I can afford to pass it up.  Cheap rent, I figure, allows me to save most of the money I earn working so that eventually I can move out on my own.  For a while, I’ll admit that the couch has been pretty great- especially for $200.  But with things turning ugly, the couch is the last place I want to be.