I know the missing piece of the puppy blues I keep feeling. It’s the increase in the sense of helplessness—not being able to do things for myself.
Right now I can’t shop, I can’t mow the lawn, I can’t work, I can’t go to taekwondo classes. If someone had to go to the hospital, I couldn’t go unless I found a dog sitter, but that of course puts you at the mercy of apps, can’t be done too frequently due to cost, and I’m not supposed to do it for another three weeks anyway, due vaccination status.
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I never feel all that on top of life at the best of times.
This is the curse of being born in the lower middle class. It is genetically embedded in us that life has its way with us. It happens to us; we don’t control it.
I don’t understand why this is, but I know it’s the most fundamental difference between the classes—how much you are in control of your own destiny and how much you are ruled by the capriciousness of fate.
You can be like me and have written seven books, earned a PhD, taught at multiple universities, and be a VP at a publicly traded company and you still know very well that you do not have the slightest bit of input into what happens to you, either big picture or day by day and minute by minute.
I was born lower middle class, and that means that life will decide what happens to me, rather than me deciding what will be my life.
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This puppy thing is multiplying the sense of helplessness right now, and that sense of helplessness is already one of my bugaboos.
I don’t like feeling this helpless and vulnerable. I don’t like it at all. I already felt my life slipping away before this. Now it’s a torrent.