Oh, I'm the asshole, part i

Easy entitlements, laughable worries, and the walk home

Aug 08, 2024

Three months ago I bought a new car, a Hyundai Ioniq 5. It’s an EV:

I was planning a whole post about my car buying process: environmentalism, bourgeois faux environmentalism, the book Die with Zero, EV depreciation. I was feeling buyer’s remorse, but I wasn’t sure if I was feeling guilty about buying into consumerism or it was my money vigilance. Then three weeks ago this happened:

While I was having dinner with friends, a van smashed into the back of my parked car. The driver fled the scene on foot and wasn’t found. The police officer on the scene said it was likely (1) a stolen car, (2) someone under the influence, or (3) an outstanding warrant/illegal firearms (there was loose ammunition on the front seat). Most likely, a combination.

For the last three weeks I’ve been dealing with the hassle of the insurance claim, the police report (trying to find the driver), the towing company, the collision repair shop, the rental car company, and shopping for another car. My insurance company Geico has just declared it a total loss and I’ll get a check for the value of the car.

It’s been an experience

I’m mostly glad that I wasn’t in the car, and just as importantly, my dog Wu Wei wasn’t either. I usually take him around with me and leave him in the car. I’ve been thinking a lot about how upset I would have been if I found him injured in the crash. As my friend Matthew Englehart put it, if I or Wu Wei had been hurt, the car insurance issues would be the least of my concerns.1 Again, grateful.

As I mentioned, I had already been suffering from buyer’s remorse. The vehicle cost more than what my entire annual budget. It was then totaled less than three months after I bought it. Even though I was insured, it really bothered me to buy something that expensive and then have it destroyed. I think it’s connected to my family fleeing the Communists and losing everything: the poor immigrant mentality of holding onto money insteading of buying things. The best way I could describe is I felt ashamed; I had done something wrong.

I was so bothered, I literally couldn’t sleep the night after the crash. So at 6am in the morning, I decided to leave the house and take Wu Wei to the park and watch the sun rise. On our walk home, we walked by my neighbor Bob’s2 van. He lives in his van full time. Bob recently lost his wife to cancer. He is in a wheelchair; he has a degenerative hip disease and is scheduled to get both legs amputated. Because his wife died and he can’t walk, he had to give his dog away. A extraordinarily difficult time.

There’s a subreddit called “Am I the Asshole?” where readers post a situation where they feel justified in their actions and readers respond. As I walked by Bob’s van that morning, so anxious about my “lost” car, I realized:

Oh, I’m being an asshole.

Here I was (1) walking (2) to my house (3) with my dog, stressed about how much insurance money I was going to get?? I was:

Walking.3
To my house.
With my dog.

I hope you find the irony of the moment laughable, because I did. The Buddhists have this term shakubuku, Minnie Driver (sorta) explains in Grosse Point Blank as the “swift, spiritual kick in the head that alters your reality forever:”

Walking by Bob’s van with my dog was the swift spiritual kick in the head to be grateful: Bob couldn’t walk, didn’t have a house, and lost his dog. I live with easy entitlements and laughable worries.

Maybe you have some laughable worries too. I’m not pointing fingers, because it’s the culture we swim in, but here’s some I’ve heard lately from friends/clients:

The Airbnb host screwed me out of [something].
Taxes are too high (or too low).
My house is too [something] or not enough [something].
The house I want to buy is $100k ($200k) higher than the bank will allow me a mortgage for.
Plane tickets are too expensive to go to [vacation location].
Traffic is getting worse.
My job is too stressful.
My job is boring/isn’t my purpose.

As my friend Will says, we’re living in peak humanity. Look back at your ancestors; did any of them have it any better than you? Not mine. From the stories my parents told me, let’s just say my ancestors were not worried about plane tickets or traffic. I have friends who disagree with me on this, but I’m absolutely believe we’re playing this game on easy mode.4 Easy entitlements and laughable worries.

I think generations before us understood gratefulness for life better than we modern day Westerners do. I’ve written before that grace is undervalued in this world. As we strengthened our sense of our “selves,” our individual personhood and separateness, we have come to believe that we’ve earned or deserve whatever we get. I’ve gotten financial freedom because I was smart and I saved money and I invested and so on, with the operative word, the egoic “I.” But the difference between me, sitting here leisurely publishing a newsletter once every couple of weeks, my dog beneath my feet, and someone else working in the fields for a landowner or in a factory for a multinational corporation is a simple accident of time and geography. I could have easily been born somewhere or other some time and lived a very different life.5 I didn’t “deserve” this life. I didn’t “earn” it. I’m drenched in grace.

It’s a reminder not to be an asshole.

Seeing grace

Knowing Bob is shakubuku to be grateful. Because Bob is more grateful than me.

Bob is awaiting his amputation surgery to remove his legs. He’s also in line for Section 8 housing, but apparently it’s hard to find a place that is both Section 8 and ADA accessible. In the meanwhile, he is patient. He cooks meals on his campstove in front of his van and shares it with about 3-4 other people living in vans. Every time he sees me, he says, “I love you, Doug.” He goes the local Menonnite church, pushing himself in his wheelchair.

He’s more grateful than I am because he sees grace better than me. To paraphrase Father Richard Rohr, those living on the edge are closer to God because God lives on the edges. People like me who have been “successful” in life, with houses, income, and vacations can’t see our selfishness, our addiction to our ego. Bob knows better: everything has been given. Despite everything he has faced in the last year, he knows he’s being held in the Light.

The most trite and most true thing that the mindfulness teachers and productivity experts will tell you is it’s all about attention. Life is SO good and it’s so hard to see. We live on a planet amazingly well-suited to us: the temperature within a thin band of livability, the oxygen the perfect amount. Soil and mycelium beneath, working for us all the time. Our bodies, doing countless things unbidden. And that’s the baseline; everything we have in modernity is whipped cream on top. We’re drenched in grace, everywhere all the time. And we take it for granted.

You want to be happy? Bob has a secret: all it takes is being grateful. You can have everything, but if you can’t feel gratitude, it will feel like you have nothing.6 Bob reminds me that I can lose my wife and dog, be waiting for my legs to be amputated, live in a van, and still be grateful. It’s really fucking humbling. It’s a reminder to me not be an asshole. The car was simply whipped cream.

That’s why I think we have to practice gratitude: it’s easy to get entitled to what we have in life, especially those of us playing this game on easy mode. But life is only as good as the pleasure we take in it. Gratitude is simply the pleasure we receive in grace.

Grace is so undervalued in this world. Miss the pleasure of grace, and miss it all. Every once in a while, you need a reminder with a swift spiritual kick in the head.

Life is so good.

How many times have you walked home with someone you love? Oh, the grace of it.

Don’t take it for granted.

We’re being held in the Light. All of us: me, you, and Bob.

Life is good.

Remember the other person was probably armed.

Name changed.

In 2022 I tore my Achilles I didn’t walk for 3 months and didn’t exercise for a year.

Compare what we mean by poverty in the U.S. today to what poverty meant around the world as recently as the 20th century. There are unending stats (think about the childhood mortality, medical care, heating/sanitation as recently as the 19th century) or anecdotal stories, but the study of how people lived before is a good anecdote to entitled thinking.

This idea comes from Warren Buffett, who knows he has hundreds of billions of dollars, not because he’s a genius investor, but because of the ovarian lottery.

And that’s what capitalism wants you to feel.