Wealth and Ambition: Will My Child Inherit My Drive for Success?

Success is inherited, the cost is not

This question lives in my head far ahead of my own time or supposed plan for life.

2017.

The large, boxy TV would fill the living room with a weak sales pitch for a just-press-blender. Sneaking in was the easy part, I now had to maneuver through the living room to make sure not to wake my dad up. A gold, half-empty Modelo bottle sat near his feet, socks still on, shoes sit not too far. Cleared. Mom was working the graveyard shift at a paper production plant. A single, "Ey. Ya vete a la casa" would sit in the notification bar on the iPhone I bought with my Chipotle money. No bother. I'll just say I was home as soon as I got off work.

Where was I? Good question.

A suburban oasis: Walmart's parking lot. Watching ten-minute-long wrestling promos after arguing who was at fault for last weekend's bender gone wrong. Deconstructing old wrestling tropes and laughing until we got dizzy. La Poderosa, a small pick-up truck suited up with insanely loud amps that reverberated my heart and soul. In this moment, the amps played a VHS copy uploaded to streaming. The interior of the truck would be illuminated by streetlamps that covered the frontside of the parking lot. Moments later. "What exactly would that mean though?" "Think about it! It's-" "Okay, so they speak Spanish but-" "But your wife doesn't" Momentary silence. "Won't that just disconnect them from their mom?" "I mean yeah, but what do you expect?" "What about us?" What about us?

Where am I? Good question.

An indifferent city that swallows me the moment I stand still. Close in proximity with the fires that fill evening news segments: rising grocery prices, rising rent costs, rising tensions, etc. I've been in situations where I didn't have an address to send mail to three times in my life. As of today, I sit with an uncomfortable truth. The truth being: who am I when the world outpaces itself, and we're all at the mercy of last second decisions that follow an undesirable throughline.

Back Porch, 2023 © Aaron Peterson

Am I only what I do? A blogger. A poet. An author. What about what I've been? A lover. A fire. A nomaly.

Identity Through Ambition

The metrics of success have always been unattainable if I follow the calendar day. Earlier this year, I was a part of a small sales team that broke metrics that impressed those who've done it for close to twenty years. In this gig economy, it was just a good weekend. If I am defined and dead in a weekend, how can I define myself outside of a paystub? The longstanding question that has alluded me all my youth: what did my parents leave behind? If I pretend to answer, I'd be severing their work for they are the living questions under the same system. What?

How?

Why... why not me? That third question is not mine. I imagine it's whoever made it so my dad got deported on his way to work. Whoever made it so my mother didn't have a translator when her brain impeded her mind. Whoever made it so I carry four different careers and none of them hold a withstanding position.

The Blame Game

Politics have sold me an idea and repackaged it with different ethnic adornments every election cycle. Higher taxes for schools to buy thousand-page history books so sterile you can take a nap on them at any class period. Cut taxes that afford a small white van to take a widowed elderly man to the doctor's office. Decisions are already made. Proposals are in the process. Let us begin to process before we decide. If you think I'm taking a stance, I remind everyone else you have the same voting power as me. Depends on what side of the oddly shaped border I live on, ink blots shudder at voting block shapes. After much research, I come to one conclusion: I'm happy when I smile. I smile when things are bad. Things are bad when I'm living. I'm living to be happy. I'm happy to be alive.

Loving Life on Lake Michigan, 2024

Who? Who? Who?

End Game

In my mid 20's, thoughts of what spaces my child will trip and fall on swirl in my mind like a lawnmower with a broken gas pedal. A backyard? An apartment lobby? A forest? Is it too early to think of these things? Well, it helps me see a better world for me, so I'd rather follow that train of thought. Anything beats, "Why, oh why, am I here?" Questions would swarm my mind, but the noise has quelled. The noise now lives around me. Yoga, meditation, and exercise have proven to narrow the noise into sharp futures I wield in my everyday life. The thing about wielding anything, it presents danger for those who see you as competition. I ask that you look after your own prospective family. Maybe you're fortunate enough to still have your parents. Tend to your garden. I'm shaping mine.

Back to Living Questions

I posit these questions. Let the answers live in the future.

Will I let my son cry when he falls? Will I let my daughter wear high heels that hurt her feet? Will I let me cry when I fall? Will I let me get so tall all I can do is fall? Will I live long enough? Will I love a tough love? Will I soft- en to suburban winds? Will I extinguish to fulfill an insufficient love? Will I will a new world? Will I write my own death? Will I drown the world to hear my second com- ing's heartbeat? Will I live or will I contin- ue? Will I or will I not? Will I? Or will Will dictate my life until I no longer will?