Peter in his essay, (in pdf) A Peddler Goes To Work, presents a kind of Horatio Alger, or rags to riches, story that transcends the genre. Coming from a long line of shopkeepers and salespeople, Peter made good selling pots and pans, then insurance, then real estate, and now, as he puts it, "selling philanthropy." What comes through in his essay is not the ego of a "top producer," nor the unease of an arriviste, but the joy he feels in aligning his life and talents with the art and science of giving. He is an inspiration to me, and to many.
I sometimes feel that Peter and I met on a bridge, a narrow rickety rope bridge, over a ravine. He was coming towards me from the side from which the strugglers cross to success. I was coming towards him from an easy life in academics towards the side where the strugglers struggle in hope, most often false. I came from meritocratic privilege to insurance sales training, as he rose from pots, pans, and insurance to the realm where the gifted give mightily and leave permanent monuments, as do epic poets, the founders of companies, dynasties, traditions, or countries. So, I just want to tell one other man's story, the little I know of it, by way of providing perspective.
The year must have been 1986. The place was Savannah, GA. The man, I will call Jake, was maybe 35, short, wiry, energetic, enthusiastic and black. I was his sales trainer, though in my whole life up until then, and from then until now I have never sold anyone anything. (I told you I came from meritocratic privilege. We don't sell things; our hands are unsoiled by commerce, mere trade and filthy lucre, or so I had been raised to believe.) But insurance training is not a prestigious calling and I had made the cut, so here I was teaching Jake what I didn't know how to do myself, sell insurance. For weeks on and off, we called on black owned businesses in the black part of town. If you know Savannah, you will see in your minds eye lovely old wooden structures, elegant old three and four story residences, painted ice cream and sherbet colors, but many of them dilapidated, out of kilter, some seeming to cave in on themselves. I recall an appointment with the editor of the black owned paper, how we waited for him in a large empty room, covered in old posters, how he never came. Over the time I knew Jake, I got to know his beaten up old Datsun, barely running, with a towel you sat on over the exposed springs, and door without handles that you opened by reaching in through a side window that couldn't be raised. I learned about his wife, who had a good job in local government. I met his little boy who would come to the office with his beloved Dad, and how the two of them held one another, and how dearly Jake obviously loved him. Jake was with us about 6 months. Over that time, on straight commission, working hard every day, he sold zero, not one policy. The Manager told me that he had the experience before, that the blacks who bought from us preferred to buy from big-shot white agents. I don't know if that was true or a presupposition on the Manager's part, but I do know that Jake worked every day, flat out, and sold nothing. I also know that his wife left him to move to Atlanta, suggesting he was unworthy of her, a loser. I know she also left Jake with the kid, just then toddling. The point I want to make is that Jake never lost his verve, never once complained. Like Peter he was a natural optimist who believed in the American Dream. He knew, he always knew, that this was the day that he would make the big sale and all would be well. Eventually, with his credit cards maxed out he went under. He is one of so many faces I can see from what we used to call "the bullpen," where the new agents would sit in their cubicles making cold calls.
You can write your own moral to these stories - about two insurance peddlers and two philanthropy consultants. Or two lovers of poetry. Or two winners and one loser, or two losers and one winner, or three winners, or three losers, however you measure that in your organization. What I want to say is that the American Dream of the Peddler made good can be very cruel, for what does it imply about those who go across that rope bridge the wrong way, or like Jake never get even a step across it in the rags to riches direction? Does it not imply that we and we alone are responsible for our own failure or mediocrity? Does it not encourage us to internalize our defeat as shame? Or to work from within denial, in therapy, on Prozac, reading motivational books, playing the kind of motivational tapes that I used to lend Jake?
Another image, to set against the rope bridge or Peddler makes good, is Fortune's Wheel, the wheel of the great goddess, whose figure so often adorns Roman coins. The Wheel at the apogee shows a King, at the nadir a Beggar, and on the left and right hand sides a man climbing or crawling. Life is a game of Fortune; we rise or fall by effort and by chance too. Jake was as good a man as you could want. As is Peter. Two Peddlers, one a winner, one a loser, as the great goddess turned her wheel, and as the market measures success.
Out of this comes for me democracy, teaching, poetry and giving as ways to honor our equality, not of the lowest common denominator only, but an equality of virtue, excellence, and of what is best in ourselves. As the Russian dissident poet, Joseph Brodsky, said to a class of undergraduates at Amherst when they admitted never having read Ovid, "You have been cheated." Certain things are our birthright, for each of us, democracy, the pursuit of happiness, cultural and ethical traditions, human worth and dignity regardless of rank, caste, class, color, or how much insurance you sold, or how much money you make, or what honors someone has bestowed on you. Giving in all its meanings honors that equality, that equal claim. That is what I am peddling, Peter too, I think.
(Was Jake deluded? Well, I told you that poetry is what I am peddling, but only on my own time, and against my better judgment, and usually against the involuntary student's express resistance. To Jake what I taught was hope, mostly false, but without false hope, of the sort Horatio Alger peddled, winners never would make their long-shot dreams come true. As they say about the lottery, "You can't win if you don't play.")
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