It’s Not Worth It
Twice a week, every week, for the better part of two years, I’d stop by the local wash and fold to pick up and drop off. I was twenty-one and couldn’t be bothered to do laundry. Whatever the price-per-pound, a far better investment than a few hours at the laundromat.
“Don’t go right, always left, and you’ll be fine.”
During my recruiting visit, nothing resonated deeper. Stay to the left… got it. Unfortunately, the closest wash and fold was to the right. It only took a few weeks of sweating like an overweight high school wrestler in the dorm basement laundromat, with far too few functioning washing machines, to make the right turn a necessary risk. Never after dark though.
Growing up where I did, on the west coast, the neighborhoods with kids playing outside and luxury cars parked in the driveway were miles from the most impoverished parts of town. It usually required getting lost, and certainly more than a right turn, to find yourself somewhere you probably didn’t want to be.
This was new to me, a single street all that separated privilege and… not. Despite the obvious struggles to the right, you’d have no idea by pulling into the parking lot at the wash and fold. Filled with cars that would stick out at a country club. Lined up for your viewing pleasure like a showroom floor. Shining every more brightly in front of the flickering signs and barred windows of the wash and fold, a Chinese takeout and what used to be, or might still be, a vacuum repair shop.
One of my best friends spent a few years a few years ago trying to make it in Hollywood. I went out to visit once. He was acting a bit and washing windows mostly. His studio apartment, or garage, made the dorm we shared the year prior feel spacious. We all make sacrifices on the way up… live like no one will, so you can live like no one can. And, of course, to afford an $800 lease payment for a new Audi.
Every year as Hanukkah was approaching, my mom would ask me the question. Eight small presents or a single large one. Always the large one. The much more difficult question was when to open. Sort of like the Marshmallow Test… how long could I hold out? Opening too early meant too many candle-filled, gift-less nights. But waiting is no easy task when you’re not yet tall enough for most rides at Disneyland and minutes feel like hours and nights drag on like the ending of a Judd Apatow movie.
Fast forward a good number of years. I was making some money and able to splurge a bit for some relatively nice Christmas gifts, for the other side of the family. There was some initial excitement upon opening the presents with my distinct gift wrapping style. As the pile under the tree dwindled though, the disappointment seemed to mount. Just a few days later, on New Year’s Eve, one of my sources revealed that certain people were surprised that I had only come bearing one gift per person. Mind you, these were mostly adults…
Leave it to me to turn that experience into a proper social experiment twelve months in the making. That next Christmas, $50 per person of whatever junk I could scrounge up at the dollar store. Hundreds of gifts, each individually wrapped. An unscientific, but presumably fascinating, test of quality versus quality.
Quantity won. Stockings full of crap and I had totally redeemed myself.
For better or for worse, the light in which we see ourselves is intimately intertwined with material stuff. Our personal value based on the quantity or quality of what we have, or, more likely, what we think other people see us with.
No washing machine, but a car most people will never drive. The clothes, car and IMDB profile to pick up the girl, but no place to take her. Stuff instead of savings. You can surely create whatever perception you want. The problem is, perception is only reality until it’s not. Oh, and most of the people you think care, don’t. In fact, they’re likely not even paying attention.
The question is, who are you trying to impress and what do you want them to see? No matter what, the people you care about most will eventually find the truth.
The same is true in business.
