Having nothing more than those two pennies was both horrible and just the slightest bit funny, the way being flat broke at times seemed to me. As I stood there gazing at Elk Lake, it occurred to me for the first time that growing up poor had come in handy. I probably wouldn’t have been fearless enough to go on such a trip with so little money if I hadn’t grown up without it.
I’d always thought of my family’s economic standing in terms of what I didn’t get: camp and lessons and travel and college tuition and the inexplicable ease that comes when you’ve got access to a credit card that someone else is paying off. But now I could see the line between this and that—between a childhood in which I saw my mother and stepfather forging ahead over and over again with two pennies in their pocket and my own general sense that I could do it too.
Before I left, I hadn’t calculated how much my journey would reasonably be expected to cost and saved up that amount plus enough to be my cushion against unexpected expenses. If I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been here, eighty-some days out on the PCT, broke, but okay—getting to do what I wanted to do even though a reasonable person would have said I couldn’t afford to do it.
This passage in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild struck me as terribly relevant to my life journey. Perhaps it is also relevant to your life journey.
The parts that spoke to me:
1. I, also, have found moments of being flat broke to be funny, in my case, more than just the slightest bit. Nothing funnier than bad situations you bring completely on yourself. This, of course, is a luxury that comes with knowing that being broke is temporary.
2. That you can prepare as much as you can for things but sometimes you just have to do them and trust that things will work out—I believe this. Every time I’ve moved to a new city, I could not afford to move to that new city, but I did it anyway. My fallback was very often a credit card, which, we all know how that worked out (it worked out with $20,000 in debt), but … it worked out. Things work out, mostly.)
I love this passage too (and your Logan-thoughts)! I’m aggressively paying down student loan debt right now, but like anything it’s come at a cost — I moved to a rural area where there aren’t too many people my age in order to take the job (in my competitive field) that would enable me to do it. It was the right decision for me, but sometimes I worry that I’ll be trapped by financial considerations for way too long. Which is why it’s helpful to be reminded that sometimes you’ve just got to take a leap.
Ha! I found this book irritating enough that I didn’t bother to finish it. I felt like she glossed over a lot of tough issues (like her drug addiction?!) and I was irked by her general attitude towards things. I was surprised to find myself lumping it in with this cultural thing I feel is going on now where people are like “oh my life is a mess and I don’t care who I hurt because I’m a mess so I can’t help it.” Like the whole first part of the book where her pack is insanely heavy I was almost screaming “just take some stuff out!” However, I guess I wasn’t all that irritated by her attitude towards money.
@schmuhl ugh, I couldn’t stand it either. this could be, honestly, because both my parents were dead when I was that age, and I didn’t end up in a heroin and sex shame spiral. I didn’t learn anything about grief or trauma or pain from the book, you know?
Holy cowbells, someone has a negative feeling about Dear Sugar? I did not know that was even possible so I consider myself wiser now.
@Hiroine Protagonist hehe I have enjoyed some of her Dear Sugar columns so I’m not a total freak, I guess? Sometimes I think they are a little overwrought.