I am a middle
class American. Somewhere between a Ford Focus and an Chevy Impala. It’s my
identity, my bias, and yes, my preference. I don’t want to be poor because
homelessness and hunger feel like components of an unpleasant lifestyle; they
scare me. I don’t want to possess great wealth because I’ve done nothing to
deserve it, and so I would feel guilty.
I understand the
middle class, have lived among us my whole life. I know us, our hopes and
fears, aspirations and anxieties, frustrations and fulfillments. I know why a
parent from Philly drives spouse and kids 350 miles to get in a long thin line of
cars to Duck, NC, where we spend our sole one-week vacation in a big wooden
house on the Outer Banks, and I know that this cannot be explained to someone
who did not grow up middle class.
Middle class
people are likeable, most of us. We take the middle part very seriously. We
remember all the times we got so drunk we blacked out, because there weren’t
too many. We know we got taken as often as we haggled out a fantastic deal. We
brag only about the latter. If we overindulge our children, we know it, defend
it, and regret it. Same when we are too strict. Behind us we leave a lifelong
litter trail of abandoned resolutions: to exercise and lose weight; to read
more and watch TV less; to finally give that rock band a try. So we remain a
bit overfed and under-read; the guitar maintains its lonesome niche in the
attic.
The best thing
about my fellow middle classians, however, is our savory take on this journey
we call life. Like the stuff we can’t help. We can’t help loving our spouse and
our children, can’t imagine a better place to be than in the stands when our
kid’s soccer team is playing. If we can’t make the game, we can’t help thinking
about the fact that we’re missing it. Once there, we are truly embarrassed when
we cheer too loudly, but the lesson seldom carries over to the next game.
Our first
reaction to intolerance is a gentle admonition to live and let live. We are
incensed by adults who are OK with being unemployed, by parents who are OK with
being absent, by diners who treat waiters like servants. We’d be thrilled to
win the big lottery, just like everyone else, but we don’t live our lives as if
such a thing will ever really happen.
Some very clever
author once wrote of this group that most of us lead lives of quiet
desperation. The esteemed thinker got it very wrong, mistaking desperate
moments, moments of sadness and moments of regret as the sum of a lifetime. He
somehow missed the ecstasy of the first look at a yowling new daughter, the
devoted application of time and talent to a job that feeds a family and
contributes to wealth, the pursuit of happiness of dependents over self, and the
hundred thousand helping hands extended over a lifetime of inability to ignore
a person in need. I think the clever writer mistook our quiet lives as
desperate rather than merely uncomplaining.
Not to mention
boring, which we certainly are. Gosh, when a movie producer wants to shoot a
flick in one of our suburban tracts, he has to plant at least seven or eight
psychopaths among our neighbors just to get the plot underway. Otherwise,
cinemagoers would be sitting through two hours and change of relatively happy,
faithful, sane folk backing out of driveways and off to classrooms, to
workplace cubicles, to the aisles of supermarkets. Who wouldn’t cry out for
Freddy Kruger, Edward Cullen, Jason, and Carrie and a few barrels of blood
after forty minutes of that? Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer has done the
cause of wakefulness in suburbia a distinct service.
Not that we set
out to be boring. We just don’t spend time trying to figure out how to be
interesting or fascinating, at least not once we’ve snagged a mate. I guess we
find ourselves less involved in interesting matters than upper class or lower
class people. I don’t know, because middle classians are the least class
conscious of all the classes. The uppers, especially the newly upper, seem to
have developed a competitive need to maintain and enhance upperness. It turns
them into folks with an interest in being interesting.
Real big time
uppers appear to go one of two ways, both interesting, only one attractive. The
attractive one is modeled by folks like Bill and Melinda Gates, whose wealth is
a direct result of giving several billion people things those people are happy
to pay for. Their more recent penchant for giving large wads of that money back
to kids who need educating and adults who need healing has made Mr. and Mrs. Gates
all the more appealing.
Paris Hilton and
Donald Trump embody the other upper. Her life swim leaves a wake that puts the
obscene in obscenely wealthy, while his relentless quest for TV face time
speaks of something novel: unquiet desperation. For the life of us, we middles
cannot fathom her need to get so drunk so often, his need for his face and his
name to be seen so often. We have to believe there are thrills she can afford
that do not require the brain squishing aid of ten cosmos. Both of them seem to
have a sincere loathing for people less rich or less camera-worthy than they.
And now,
already, I feel guilty. Who am I to berate Paris or The Donald? They could be
going through difficulties I can’t even imagine. If they wanted to be left
alone, we middles would be the first ones to oblige them, even though People
Magazine would have you believe differently.
Don’t get me
wrong. They are both interesting in an uninteresting sort of way. You know,
like a really good plate spinner at a circus or a really bad movie. I mean,
have you seen “Plan 9 From Outer Space”? They really do use an old shower
curtain to separate a commercial pilot from the “rest” of the plane. Come on!
Which leads to
the more serious middle class lapses. While a superficial fascination with
inexplicable celebrity is mostly harmless, we are not at our best when we seek
such things for ourselves or our children. Our competitiveness can take on an
unpleasant, even mean quality.
Also, we are
sometimes too subject to fear. It can drive out compassion and tolerance,
virtues we normally prize deeply. We then require direction. When those poor
Amish girls were murdered in their tiny schoolhouse, our righteous, fear-driven
rage was righted by the Spirit-driven response within the Amish community who
sought to heal through forgiveness rather than “bring closure” through
vengeance.
As we confront
the specters of violent extremism, suicidal child killers, and insufficiently
regulated immigration, we search for the best that is within us knowing that
fear will shrink our hearts and close our minds and block our vision. It is no
accident that some are clamoring for higher walls and deadlier guns.
Yes, we are at
our worst when our valor fails and our fears rule. Luckily, we are usually able
to call on reserves of courage and venture once again into an uncertain world
but a world with slightly more hope in it than despair, more love than hate,
more joy than anguish, more laughter than tears. More good than evil.
Not a lot more
good than evil. Just more. But to us middles, that make all the difference.
