My own private Zeitgeist
On the road to discovering how truly cliche you could possibly be, please refer to every inch of my blog. I’ve had a mid life crisis (marital affair), I’ve had spiritual redemption (post Katrina), I’ve changed teams (now lesbian), I’ve adopted a black child (before Sandra Bullock), I’ve been obsessed my whole life with nutrition (read: any Michael Pollan), I left the world of conservation to work in the world of Wall Street only to start down the path of self-discovery (after the 2008 meltdown).
I was reading about Alex Bogursky’s leaving of CP+B – the guy sounds like a total whack job but not unlike a boss that I slaved to once and somehow almost miss. He had an epiphany when asked about selling Coke Zero in a time of kid’s obesity issues – he said he responded to an audience and realized his mouth was totally disconnected from his soul. I recall a moment but it was a while ago when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade center and emails among my sources in New York were flying all around and in one I hit reply to all: “Keep buying, it is us as consumers that will overcome this event.” Was that me? Good grief. When Alex asks what is Alex, moments that like make me ask, who the hell is Rachel? I had spent a lifetime making sure to never work for the man and certainly to never work for just money.
But again, as I start down this path of enlightenment and realize that in getting and spending, I have laid waste my powers (see Wordsworth’s The World is Too Much With Us), I now want to use my all powerfulness to make my contribution as my mother used to pine for working in nursing homes, she wanted to make her contribution and her contribution was not lost on me, I never pass up an opportunity to help an elderly person because I always think that could have been my mother.
But my focus is on children – specifically feeding them nutritious meals and radically changing eating patterns of less fortunate people. Will I one day find out this too is a cliche, and that it is arrogant, narcissistic, or whatever to believe you know best and can save anyone, change any system, be the person you hope to be?