Upper Middle Class Crisis

 

I have fantastic news and affirmation that I am on track.  I have just been told this story by my new friend that I have made in my building.  She is a Lawyer in a big Sydney firm, but works for a partner.  This partner is pulling down, $500,000 plus and the husband works as well in a good job but not as good as hers.  They have a $5.5 million harbor house and she has children as well.  She has the big career, children and a husband, who things are good with.  And my friend walks in on her crying at least once every two weeks.  She balls her eyes out in front of my friend saying “I hate my life, I have everything you’re supposed to have and I can’t stand it.  I don’t want to work anymore, I want to look after the children, but I can’t quite because I earn more than my husband.”  My friend finds this fascinating, as do I.  The law partner is not from money, she is first generation money, so it’s a very big deal that she has got to where she is, based on her brains.  But even when you tick all the boxes of what success is supposed to be, people can be miserable.  My friend cries back with her, going, “you’re younger than me, you’re partner, you’re married, you have the big house and children.  I’m single, divorced, no children, struggling with my mortgage on my tiny studio, my life was not supposed to look like this, I was supposed to be more like you, you can buy labeled clothes and you don’t even know what your wearing, I shop a Supre to try copy the look of the brand name clothes because I can’t afford them.”

Both women hate their live with a passion, but one is because she doesn’t have the things she needs to be happy and the other because she has the things she is supposed to have and she is so miserable from the hard work to get them.

The guy I meet who knows all about numbers said that I am a 22, which means that this is the last time I will be born, I am here on this planet for the last time to learn my final lesson.  Now regardless of what you think of this, the next thing he said is so spot on is scary.  He said “all 22’s resent that they have been born, they don’t want to be here, they can get money and power of they want it, but it means nothing to them because they don’t know what to do with it.  Because they are here to learn their final lesson, and leave the rebirthing cycle.”  I have never told anyone that I hate my life and can’t wait to get out of here.  And yet picked that in me the second time he meet me.  Amazing.  Don’t worry I’m not about to check out just yet, but I do find very hard to make sense of why I am here.  Maybe I persecuted gay people in my last life and I am here to learn what it means to be gay this time round.

After the great depression and WWII the 50’s and 60’s were all about getting back on our collective feet and security.  But our generation is rebelling against security as the meaning of life.  We are saying there has to be more than making smart safe choices.  But what is it?  I guess that’s what my journey is about.

After the GFC I think lots of people are questioning the western value that you work hard to become affluent and that what life’s about, it’s about living the nice life.  If that becomes unachievable, then what do you make life about?