San Diego doesn’t cease to give me good impressions. Today I visited Coronado Island with no other expectation than to find a coffee shop and catch up in my writings. I ended up taking long walks over beautiful avenues with the charm of small but luxury stores. The mansions you see along the coast make you feel as if you are intruding just by looking at the windows, always open and showing up the interior. It’s is a celebration of well-spent wealth, where the facades show full trust in the city and its inhabitants. Now you have the chance to see the elderly people that accumulated all this buying power, trying to make the most of it in their walkers and convertible Volvos. The youngest dine around with their teen children trying to lecture them about life while they keep their noses pointing to a texting device and rolling their eyes now and then.
It’s a fact of life that the adventure of creating wealth and actually enjoying it is always broken by at least one generation. It’s hard to communicate the richness of experiences that you get from humble origins, given you don't settle for that. Few parents have the virtue of educators. We really need very little to survive, so it must be very tempting for the new generation to lay back, try a couple of projects (just to say you are doing something) and forget ambition altogether.
Forfeit ambition in exchange or peace is a good trade, but not when that peace is mistaken by laziness and lack of realization. The children of rich people are not the only victims. California has a huge population of homeless that are perfectly capable of taking care of their own lives but they choose not to. I have not one ounce of compassion for those who extend their hands, nor for those who speak extensively about how traumatic their childhood was.
Humiliation is a benevolent medicine that saves lives. Never deny it to whom it's due.
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