Letter: Honoring ‘just getting by’

Graphic by Lori Deaton

The present time we live, the “now” of our existence, surely must be a very thin place indeed, one made more so by an unimagined pandemic we still don’t fully understand. So what happens when life seems to turn against you, when things go wrong and all our markers of success suddenly dissipate? What happens if you follow all the rules, work hard, get the best education you can, stay out of trouble, save a little, yet face a future made more uncertain each day? What if you now live in a world that, by present standards, can’t be fixed? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Forever stamp we could have used in a great yesterday now seemingly not returnable?

What if you’re a mountaineer who lives in Western North Carolina, where your hardscrabble life hasn’t been easy in the best of times? Or a young person working in Asheville in a restaurant or retail store that may never reopen? Or just graduating and looking for a job in the worst market in perhaps 70 years? You could be overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness in your lives, but, if you’re a mountaineer who matches the majestic mountains surrounding us all, you’ll somehow find a way to just get by.

Let me start by not offering myself as a model for success in this brave new COVID world. Instead, let me recommend my parents or perhaps your grandparents as a better one. Yes, I did grow up in Texas in what USA Today described as two of the most miserable places in America to live, Willis and Pasadena. My family of five or six shared a single bathroom in an 800-square-foot home, all my brothers piled into one bedroom with me, no air conditioning until well after I left. My mother only went to the sixth and Dad to the seventh grade, and, through inconstant, temporary work like slapdash painting, bad carpentry, working on road crews where asphalt melted in the Texas heat, waitressing and taking in laundry, we cobbled together a life that forever resembled a Greek tragedy that never happened. Even with so many markers of deprivation and a claim to relative poverty, our circumstances were no worse and even a bit better than everyone else around us. We were the precarity class, our existence forever precarious and threatened, neither middle nor lowered much by life’s ups and downs. We somehow just got by.

Today we live in a society that celebrates success by wealth, materialism, degrees, titles, recognition and by all the “stuff” we have, whether sports cars, expensive homes, market portfolios or country club memberships. Yet let me suggest that we honor as proud examples those who are just doing OK, just getting by somehow in an increasingly complicated, messy, unstable economic and human environment. Like my parents, their lives probably involve intensive, even exhausting labor, uncertain outcomes, constant misfortune, shifting circumstances and adaptive, individual abilities that shape that effort. They’re somehow just getting by. Theirs is a remarkable achievement that endures from generation to generation. As my mother once said, “What matters in life is that you did the best you could with the tools you had,” even though qualitatively, the “tools” you’re given aren’t as good as those of a lot of other folks. These days, just getting by should be celebrated as a success, one that makes us all proud.

— Milton Ready
Hendersonville

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5 thoughts on “Letter: Honoring ‘just getting by’

  1. Johnny to the A

    Another local wanting to celebrate mediocrity. Shocker.

    “What if you’re a mountaineer who lives in Western North Carolina, where your hardscrabble life hasn’t been easy in the best of times?”

    – You move. No one is keeping you here. No one but you. Your move would be noticeably easier than that of a refugee from a war torn country.

    “Or a young person working in Asheville in a restaurant or retail store that may never reopen?”

    – Stop pretending retail or restaurants are careers. They are not and never will be. The are simply poverty level jobs without hope or a future.

    Your mother was wrong. Who stops anyone from acquiring new tools? No one.

    Hold yourself accountable and make a difference. Yes, it is significantly more difficult and tiring than blaming your situation, and possibly past poor decisions, on someone else.

    With the internet, even public libraries, much information is available to those who care to look and truly make an effort to better themselves.

    Or you can overeat, drink, smoke and have unprotected sex and continue the pain and slow death that so many in this region prefer. This is slow suicide and doesn’t sound enjoyable.

    As with anything else, it is your choice. A noticeable percentage of local need to stop pretending it is someone else’s.

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    • C-Law

      Hey Johnny, kinda weird, right!?

      Old Prof. Ready used to do History at UNCA. So the academia/leftist worldview is pretty much a given, I mean you simply don’t get on the faculty of any department at UNCA, let alone History if you have any but the Marxist/Hegelian dialectic worldview…not gonna happen. However, without dating myself too much Old Milt was known to be quite the hard-ass in the mid-late 80s as far as his classroom expectations and standards were to actually earn a respectable mark in his classes. Meaning you had to show up and produce high level work for him and you actually earned the grade you got. No handouts or snowflake feels/safe-spaces to hide in back then. He was NOT a grade inflator back in the old days…not sure where this “soft bigotry of low expectations” angle came from with Prof. Ready?

      Anyhow, hope he’s enjoying “retirement.”

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    • Milton Ready

      Let me begin by saying that Johnny A has a point. The belief he espouses that most people are responsible for their lot in life has become the most powerful idea in the tool kit of modern politics but one that is waning as we await the next bailout. The virtuous-vicious among us forever sniff out irresponsible groups who make poor choices that have bad outcomes, some like Johnny A suspiciously too readily.
      Blacks always seem to be singled out. Or the poor. Or women. Johnny A adds local mountaineers, the young working in “poverty level jobs without hope of a future,” and those who “overeat, drink, smoke, and have unprotected sex and continue the pain and slow death that so many in this region prefer.” Wow! That’s a lot of people to despise, “a noticeable percentage of locals” according to Johnny A.
      Guess who’s missing from Johnny A’s long list? Perhaps few groups are as reckless and irresponsible as politicians and corporate executives who seem incapable of being accountable for their actions except when things go well. There aren’t a whole lot of adults in those political and corporate boardrooms but they also make poor choices with bad outcomes far more consequential. Like Johnny A’s preachments, there’s not a whiff of empathy, kindness, or fellow feeling in their post-Darwinian world-view.
      Finally, to paraphrase Winnie the Pooh, Johnny A shouldn’t oughta tell me or anyone else my Mother was wrong. Shame on you! Mothers seldom if ever are, and mine simply told me that the tools I was given at birth weren’t as good as those of a lot of others. She never told me I couldn’t get new ones. Johnny A and others like him might try acquiring a little more understanding and loving-heartedness tools themselves. It won’t make them bleeding-heart liberals but it might make them more compassionate conservatives, an endangered species these days.

  2. Enlightened Enigma

    ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ that’s the nature of progressive democrackkks…

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  3. Lou

    To every single “human” who has contributed to comments thus far: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING. The author said “What happens if you follow all the rules, work hard, get the best education you can, stay out of trouble, save a little, yet face a future made more uncertain each day? What if you now live in a world that, by present standards, can’t be fixed?”
    What about that would prompt you to just start vomiting insults and judgements? What is WRONG with you??? Being born white, male, and adoring of a losing flag should NOT supersede true Americans who work hard every day and put up with more abuse than you self-absorbed haters EVER will. Must be really sad for you, to live with so much hate and prejudice. I hope you will all find peace one day in your choices. Know that, no matter what, WE are NOT going to stop fighting for our place in this world, so YOU best get comfortable moving over.

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