Friday, August 01, 2003

Rich Man Poor Man

Tonight over at Barnes & Noble with my 8-year-old and his friend, I was sitting at a kid-sized picnic table as the kids looked at books together, thinking about this community where I live. It's privileged. You could say wealthy. My kid and his friend are dressed in expensive quality polo shirts and shorts, costly sneakers, nice raincoats. They spent the day together at camp learning to play tennis, learning to swim, doing arts and crafts. As I look over, they are sharing books in a clean, pretty, well-lit bookstore. And it made my mind wander to think of what wealthy communities look like, what poor communities look like. What the striking differences are.

There was a grandmother with some grandchildren buying them books nearby. Their clothes were obviously expensive, but what else ... simply on the surface they were in "order" -- not wrinkled, not torn, not old -- and they were clean and pleasant. A poor neighborhood is visually and fundamentally recognized by chaos, noise, dirt, brokenness and a lack of resources. A wealthy neighborhood is characterized by orderliness, cleanliness, peace and quiet, moderation and beauty. These children in the bookstore were, for the most part, unaware of their own beauty, privilege, luxury.

There's something about order that makes a civilization, but can also stiffle one. How we mix up order with a little bit of passion and chaos in art is interesting to me. When one is too conservative and orderly, life feels deadly and sterile. When one is too extreme and passionate, life can feel completely out of control.

I've always thought poverty was mired in a poverty of ideas and a poverty of awareness. My kid and his friend will never feel uncomfortable at a fancy party, or walking a manicured path on the MIT campus, or settling back into a first class seat on a jet heading to Paris. They have a wealth of experience and a wealth of possibilities. They are wealthy in their minds and their community teaches them about a richness of resources others do not necessarily learn about. A poor kid might never even imagine going to Paris, certainly not have the feeling its no big deal, as my son does.

Brokendown cars, shattered windows in old buildings, poorly fitting clothes. The poor are not winning the battle with entropy and time. Every day everything is falling apart a little. In Watts and in Beverly Hills everything is falling apart, but in the wealthy community, they have the resources to keep things mended, new, pretty, in order. Most miraculous of all is a child who starts in poverty and creates wealth for themselves. Like all psychological baggage, it's a major feat to fire your booster rockets hot enough and long enough to escape the pull of gravity -- psychological gravity -- and leave behind a dysfunctional neighborhood, or dysfunctional family. No matter how bad they were, they feel "like home" and to make a new way of life home, is a tricky endeavor.