I read Dave
Eggers novel, A Hologram for the
King, as a cautionary tale: one I needed to hear. While well written, the
novel is one I recommend reading quickly. I did not want to linger with the
protagonist, Allen Clay; Rather, I hoped to get in, survey the nasty business, and get
out. Clay is a washed up business man, whose
personal and career disappointments have left him impotent by choice. He can’t
connect and he can’t succeed. He waits
for a big break, but circumstances and self-doubt sabotage himself at every
turn. He is my ghost of the future, and I turned pages wondering how I
could close the book and make my future more meaningful?
Eggers text did not leave much room for hope. Allen is pathetic because his path to failure was so hopeful--so like my own. He is all of us who are trying to make something of ourselves. Allen was trained to expect disappointment because his wide-eyed eagerness and gumption are smothered by the realities of a down-turned economy and a dog-eat-dog business world, in which hard work is a small percentage of the equation that yields success. Sound familiar?
Eggers text did not leave much room for hope. Allen is pathetic because his path to failure was so hopeful--so like my own. He is all of us who are trying to make something of ourselves. Allen was trained to expect disappointment because his wide-eyed eagerness and gumption are smothered by the realities of a down-turned economy and a dog-eat-dog business world, in which hard work is a small percentage of the equation that yields success. Sound familiar?
As I edge
towards thirty, I can relate to Allen’s predicament. I chose to be a teacher,
hoping to avoid the vapid allure of success and money for real fulfillment
changing lives. Turns out that isn’t so much a reality either. Don’t get
me wrong, I like being a teacher, but I come home feeling like a failure more
often than a success. I get the feeling the kids who succeed
would do fine without me, and the ones at risk often need more than I can
give.
Fortunately,
as I shoveled M&M’s into my mouth, depressed by this literary fiction, and
determined to stare at the TV and forget all this meaning of life stuff, my husband and I
landed on Raising Hope. We watched episode after episode on Netflix, laughing out loud. The show seems at first
a silly guilty-pleasure, probably offensive to Americans struggling financially,
and full of cheap jokes. The characters are inarticulate, and are the trashiest
of families. However, as I watched, I see myself in the family. It is an exaggeration of
American life. As I watch the grandparents in the show, young and
already trapped in tough careers and their son, still in his twenties and tethered by a baby from a one-night
stand, I can kind of relate. Who among us doesn’t sound stupid half the time we open our mouths, or
at least worry our ignorance is showing through. Who among us has a life exactly like we imagined it? While the family’s life is by all
accounts disappointing, the family deals with what life throws at them with
imagination and team work. Through the family's exaggerated failure, the show reminds us that joy doesn’t come from
success in careers and the perfect family. It comes from taking yourself
lightly enough to make a hotdog into an octopus to make your husband smile. If I am waiting to be perfect, the show reminds me, I will always be disappointed.
Raising Hope reminds me to humble myself. Allen Clay’s tragedy isn’t his failure. It is his lack of humility. He can’t handle being a regular guy and so he can’t connect to anyone else around him. His tragedy is entitlement. I shouldn’t expect to change every life. I should expect to hug children when they need it most, to teach them something new every day, to introduce a reluctant reader to a great book. As my husband snuggles closer to me, and kisses me on the head as we wait for the next episode of our Netflix marathon to load, I realize it isn’t that I need a new path. It’s that I need new eyes: ones that see all I have to be thankful for instead of just my own failures.
Raising Hope reminds me to humble myself. Allen Clay’s tragedy isn’t his failure. It is his lack of humility. He can’t handle being a regular guy and so he can’t connect to anyone else around him. His tragedy is entitlement. I shouldn’t expect to change every life. I should expect to hug children when they need it most, to teach them something new every day, to introduce a reluctant reader to a great book. As my husband snuggles closer to me, and kisses me on the head as we wait for the next episode of our Netflix marathon to load, I realize it isn’t that I need a new path. It’s that I need new eyes: ones that see all I have to be thankful for instead of just my own failures.
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