Privilege
You might look for simplicity in some (or all) areas of your life. If I can do this more simply and if I could make this less complicated, you might say to yourself, everything is going to get better.
A lot of us try to make things as simple as possible. I do it with our software business. Simple software for everyone was an original tagline. Our software is so simple even your mom can use it was another marketing tactic from last year.
We have a simple software tool, but I’ve realized over the years that just because it’s simple doesn’t mean that it’s for everyone. You have to want to use it. You have to have the intention and the mindset to change what you do for productivity and organization. And you have to have the resources to learn it and make it work for you; resources like time.
This is one way that privilege comes into this conversation about doing less, better. And it’s something I want to talk about early (and often) in the life of this newsletter. Because without the resources and privileges I have, I wouldn’t be writing this, and, most likely, you wouldn’t be reading it.
I’ve struggled this week to frame this post. I knew early on that I wanted to discuss privilege and, yet, it is not simple to write about. Privilege is not simple. I can’t make it simple, as much as I’m going to try in the following paragraphs.
Growing up, I was taught the American Dream just like you. Work hard and you can do anything. You can become wealthy and travel the world. It doesn't matter where you start in life because you can make your way to the top. Oh, and if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.
When we started our business in 2018, my husband and I knew we could take that leap because we had the resources to fall back on if we failed.
When I was burning out, I knew I could decide to leave my job because while it would cause financial strain, it wouldn’t financially ruin me. I knew we had the resources to get through it.
At my lowest emotional state in the spring of 2021, when it felt like the walls were closing in and I couldn’t find my breath and I wasn’t sure I could keep going, when the darkest thoughts crept in, I knew in the back of my mind that I was going to be okay. That I could find the help I needed. I had other options.
My privilege gave me those options. I found my way through, thanks, in large part, to the resources I have at my disposal. Not everyone has those resources. Not everyone has the privilege to attain those resources.
My parents were never wealthy. When I was very young, they filed for bankruptcy and moved in with my maternal grandfather, who supported our family financially for a while. I’m not sure how long, as it’s not something we discussed as a family. I’ve put pieces together over the years, and as I got older, my parents shared more of that time of their life. The shame of needing to rely on family for financial stability weighed too heavily for too long on them to really talk about what that support did for us as a family. It set me up to succeed.
My mom worked retail and office jobs while my dad worked low-wage hourly jobs like delivery driver and food service prep. We lived in apartments after moving out of my grandfather’s mobile home, and eventually when I was in middle school, my parents bought the mobile home that my mom still lives in.
They were so proud to have made it.
Some people looked down on our home - the trailer, as they called it. To them, it showed how low we were on the economic ladder compared to them.
To me, it’s home. It’s comfortable. It’s where I have beautiful and also very painful memories of my dad, who died peacefully there in 2018. It’s the home that I know every inch of, and when the day comes for my mom to sell it and move away, I know I’ll be just as sad as she is. We will grieve the loss of that mobile home, that trailer, because it gave us so much.
Growing up, I had everything I needed and wanted. I always had clothes to wear and food to eat. Summers involved at least one day camp. When I started driving, I had my own car to use. I didn’t ask for special things often, but I remember asking for a Nike jacket once, and sure enough, I got it. I’ve never asked my mom this, but I bet it was a financial strain to buy the jacket. I also remember the Nike backpack I won during a golf camp being cut a little by someone and my mom being so upset. Material possessions are important to her. They need to be maintained. They need to look nice. It is how my mom manages her perceived shame in believing she isn't wealthy; that she isn’t “good” enough. She thought that because she and my dad never earned a lot of money, they had to make everything they owned look nice in case someone thought they were poor.
It never felt like we were poor, though. While we may not have taken the typical American family vacation to Disneyland (not until I was 21 anyway), we did take long day trips on the weekends and at least once a year we went to visit family somewhere.
In high school, I worked my ass off to get top grades. I received an almost full-ride scholarship to a private liberal arts college. The scholarship was the only way I was going to college. I knew enough about money to know I couldn’t take out student loans in the amount that would have been required to attend the schools I wanted to go to. The schools that I believed, and had been convinced, would get me ahead.
I also started working for cash under the table when I was 13 at a local business, which legally hired me when I was 14. I worked at that business for five years, saving enough to pay for what my college scholarship didn't cover. My parents had no resources to help me pay for my college tuition.
I’m sharing all this to frame my privilege because I have a lot.
My childhood was not without anything, and yet nothing was guaranteed that I would succeed in life. Except, here’s the thing: it was.
I’m white.
If I wasn’t, with all things being the same, I probably would not have had the same experiences, opportunities, or advantages.
How many Black girls from lower-income families go to golf camp during the summer?
How many Latinx kids get hired at 13, work for the same business for five years and earn enough to pay for college?
How many Indigenous teenagers have their own car to drive by 16?
I don’t have the statistics to answer these questions, but I bet the numbers are low.
My privilege of being born white made a lot of things possible for me, even if I was born into a lower economic class.
That privilege, however, does not take away from the hard work that got me the scholarship. It does not take away my hard work to earn a master's degree while working full-time, starting a business, or any of the myriad of things I’ve achieved in my life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
Which is why privilege is complicated.
It’s also what makes do less, better, complicated. It’s why I said at the beginning that without my privileges I wouldn’t be writing this.
I can explore what it means to do less, better because I have the resources to explore. I have the financial stability, thanks to my husband, to not have to find a job. I can give my labor away for free for the time being. I get to be like the thinkers of the Enlightenment - the white men who didn’t have to work and could walk through the woods on a Tuesday contemplating life and not worry about what they would eat for dinner because someone else was taking care of it.
Okay, my life isn’t that idyllic. I’m a woman, after all. I don’t have all the privileges in the world.
I do, however, have the privilege of exploring what I want to be when I grow up, even as I am now solidly in my late 30s. I can take the time to research productivity and capitalism and labor. And I get to imagine a different world with this exploration.
I said in my first post that Do Less, Better is a call to action. I firmly believe that. It’s a call to action because you and I don’t have to live in the hustle. You can opt-out.
But, you also have to have the privilege to opt-out.
I know this deeply.
My intent with Do Less, Better, is to share ideas of how you can opt out of the dominant, extraction-based, hustle culture of our world in big ways, yes, but also in small ways. Small ways that don’t risk your income or livelihood. Ways that make you feel seen and valued, despite everything telling you otherwise.
I’m not always going to get it right. My lived experience is different than yours. While I can empathize, I will never know what it is like to be a Black woman in America. Or what it's like to be an immigrant. Or know what it's like to need SNAP to feed my family. I will never assume to understand someone else's lived experience.
Life isn’t simple, as much as we want to make it so. Life for some is much harder than for others. Privilege is one reason why that is true.
I’m reading Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes. She rightly calls out white women for our privilege. She writes,
It makes white women uncomfortable to think that they are no different from their hired help. What they chase - and have been given - is validation, acceptance, and success, but only on terms set by white men. Proximity to power, however real that feels, is a simpler choice than solidarity. True allyship lives in relationships, true solidarity requires giving up some comfort, material resources, and power - and sharing it with others. To confront your own internalized misogyny and racism is humbling, destabilizing. Can white women do this? Can they acknowledge and own their whiteness and its accompanying entitlement? Can they get past themselves and get on our level?
Only then do we have a chance.
A chance to reimagine what our world can be. A chance to say that caring for ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our communities is valid and valuable labor. That capitalism can’t take it all. That you and I have value by simply existing. By being human.
In sharing my privilege, by acknowledging it, I’m doing my best to say that your lived experience is valid and valuable. That you should benefit from the same advantages that I’ve had throughout my life.
I might not be getting it right. I’m a work in progress. I’ll keep listening and learning. It’s how I can use my privilege to understand the world as it is and imagine the world as it could be.
But to change the world into what it could be, I can’t do it alone.
How has your privilege benefited you? Can you look at those privileges clearly and openly, acknowledging them for what they are? Can you accept them and still know that they do not invalidate any of your hard work to get you where you are today?
Can you imagine a world where everyone has the same privileges as you and that that does not diminish your achievements?
Two things can be true at the same time, after all.
It’s that simple.
