Better to be Lucky than to be Good

If you read my post about my mom, and I hope that you did, you know that I was also planning to write about my dad.  I kind of got side tracked by the insufferable assholes and health care. And now Donald Trump is blowing up, so it’s hard to think about much else. But, it’s important to try, just to keep one’s sanity. So I am going to do everyone a favor and write about my dad to distract us all from what passes for politics these days. One reason I wanted to write about my dad is that he was the anti-Trump. Donald Trump is a narcissistic blowhard who thinks the world owes him, and resents any difficulties that might come his way (even if those difficulties are directly his own doing). My dad was not that way. My dad was a mensch.

Now there have been many wise and learned books written about menshlikeit and the definition remains somewhat elusive. One central component, though, is a feeling of grace, of being lucky. Part of being a mensch is appreciating what you have, feeling like things are going better then you might have expected. Critically, whatever success or comfort or status you enjoy is not (solely) due to your particular talents, but involves a large measure of luck. And that feeling of luckiness engenders a modesty, and empathy for others who are not so lucky. You can start to see why Trump is an anti-mensch.

My dad was not born into circumstances that would automatically make one feel lucky. His father died when he was two-years old. He was sent away to stay with some relatives (not clear for how long, weeks?) and when he got back, his mother was married to a widower with 3 other kids. This was probably something of a shock, but it seems the family worked pretty well. To the extent my dad reflected on family conflict, it was the difficulty his older sister had with the new stepsisters, and how challenging it was for his mom to have a stepdaughter her own age. My dad was the baby of the family and a pretty robust kid. A lot of the drama went on over his head. He felt the others in the family had it worse than he did.

His parents (his mom, his bio dad, his step dad) were Jewish immigrants. Nobody was wealthy. He was lucky, though, to inherit a very robust and rich culture. Jews invented menschlikeit. As immigrants his family also probably felt pretty lucky. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination to feel lucky to be a Jew in America rather than in Eastern Europe in the 1930’s. Things weren’t perfect in America, there was a fair bit of discrimination against Jews. But I expect the attitude was, “So…we have to change our names and have quotas at colleges? That’s it? That’s nothing. We have been oppressed by the best.” He grew up in Northern New Jersey in a pretty heavily Jewish neighborhood, but it seemed that there were other ethnic enclaves that all rubbed against each other (he took me to the beach town his family summered at, and pointed out the Italian beach and the Black beach along the way). I’ve never read a Phillip Roth novel, but I assume that’s the setting. Everybody feeling pretty lucky to have their little piece of the American pie, and comfortably blending old world and new. That’s what Roth writes about, right? At least my dad seemed to feel like he was pretty lucky to be growing up Jewish in northern New Jersey in the 30s/40s.

One of the main ways my dad felt lucky was to be born at the right time. He was not a high achiever in school. I get the sense he was kind of the class clown. He described himself as a C student. In his telling, that wasn’t seen as a problem in those days. As long as you managed to squeak from grade to grade, nobody worried. He went to college (lucky to have a family that valued education), got drafted (lucky to spend the Korean war as a clerk in Germany because somebody noticed he could type). He was extremely lucky that there was still a GI bill that let him bum around Europe awhile, and go to graduate school. He was also lucky that a C student (in college as well as high school) with vague direction (he first studied forestry, then got into finance, then economics) could get a PhD. My dad came of age when having an aimless youth didn’t derail your future plans. Things were not so competitive and there were resources for people like my dad (white, male, veteran). Reflecting on the opportunity he had to spend his 20’s kind of growing up and finding his direction was one of the main ways my dad felt lucky. I think he saw this contrast with the college students he later taught who had to have been pretty focused even to get in to college, and who were more anxious about “preparing for the future”.

That’s right, my C-student dad ended up as a tenured economics professor at a pretty good school (SUNY-Albany). He was very lucky to be finishing his PhD in the early sixties, as the baby boom was hitting college and higher ed was expanding. He was in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, the field of Economics was also changing. My dad started as a social scientist (his dissertation was on economic history), but Economics became a branch of Mathematics. My dad did not follow this transition (being a C student does have its limitations) and basically got sidelined. He retired as an associate professor (which tells a certain segment of my audience everything they need to know). This is certainly an experience that could leave a person bitter. I don’t believe my dad experienced it that way (at least that wasn’t the dominant experience). Rather, he liked his job. He felt that he had done pretty well. He did realize that he had kind of lucked in to this position. He cautioned both my brother and me that academia was not as cushy a job as we might have thought based on his experience. But neither of us listened, we both became professors.

Right now, one of the most important ways my dad’s attitude is influencing my own thinking is in the circumstances of his death. My dad was not particularly lucky in the genes he inherited (I have hopes I take after my mom here… but evidence suggests I am my father’s son). My dad was the only male in his family to make it past 50. He did not escape the family trait of heart disease: He had his first bypass in his 50’s and eventually a second one. He also had emphysema and assorted other ailments. His attitude, though was generally, “I’m lucky to have made it this far and to be in this good of shape.” Post retirement my dad travelled a lot. To really exotic and fairly uncomfortable places. Eventually my mom had enough, and he went on his own (or recruited another family member). There was a bit of competitive traveling, trying to one-up his friends on who had been where. Mostly, I think, he was seizing an opportunity. He wanted to enjoy his ability to travel while he still could. Frankly, I think he was surprised he could still do it in his 70s and 80s. The ability to exercise his curiosity about the world was a gift, and he wasn’t going to waste it.

He passed away at 82, pretty suddenly. He was out hiking with his friends in the Rockies on Wednesday, and had died by Friday. His passing was sudden, but not surprising. He knew he was living on borrowed time, he had felt that way probably a good 20 years. Rather than railing against his limits, he appreciated how well he had done. “82 is not too shabby”, I see him saying. I can’t imagine ever thinking, “this is enough” in terms of lifespan (I know some people get to that point, but that’s both an alien and terrifying prospect). That certainly wasn’t my dad’s attitude, quite the opposite. He was happy for each day he got. He just didn’t expect them or take them as his due. Think about that. Think about getting 20 extra years of reasonably healthy life. Think about thinking about your last 20 years of life this way. What a way to feel lucky. I hope I am lucky enough to take after my dad in this way.

Now, my dad was a smart guy. He worked reasonably hard. He got along with people. He followed doctors’ orders, etc. He bears a fair measure of responsibility for the successes he enjoyed. But he knew it wasn’t all about him. If the classic description of entitlement is being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple, my dad felt he had been born on first base and reached on an unforced error. That’s not particularly a situation to go bragging about, you probably aren’t going to score a run from there, but it is a situation that should make a person feel pretty lucky. It could have been worse, way worse.