My parents divorced when I was just a tot. Wisely, they sent me to a headshrinker to make sure I was processing everything alright. I remember a few things from the experience. The cigarettes and ash trays were always present back then. It was the mid seventies; ash trays were the number one plaything for bored kids in restaurants and waiting rooms. This was before capitalism made psychology into a gimmick, so the office was a standard headshrinker office with dark brown paneling and leather furniture, and all the magazines in the waiting room were geared towards adults. I don’t remember anything about any of the sessions. Sometimes it was the whole family, sometimes it was just my siblings and I, and a few times it was just me. However, burned into my memory is an exchange with the man during one of the sessions I was there alone.

The head-shrink showed me this neat thing and we talked about it for a little bit, then he asked if I would like one like it. I said that I would, and he then produced a number of items that the thing was made of and offered them to me. (Notably, one of the items was a small stack of dollar bills.) Certainly, at the time I was not aware of this, but he was watching me process the offer and what it involved. I, being the lazy bastard I am, even at that age, then retracted and turned down his offer. I am fairly certain that this was my last session.

This memory keeps coming back to me because of the times we are living through. We watched as Bob Villa and Martha Stewart had half hour shows that promised people all these neat things they could have if they bought certain products, but never shared how much work was involved. Not just in the making of that one thing, but to gain the skills required to make that one thing properly. Gardening shows convincing people to spend thousands of dollars on a nice backyard garden without explaining how much work maintenance would be: weeding, pruning, and mulching. Then, marketing firms upped the ante and sold sneakers on the promise that they would make people exercise. Or cars with features that would make people drive better without any effort at all. Our country’s foreign policy has even joined the game and promises a peaceful world once Russia and China are put into line, but there is never mention of the cost. The work, sacrifice, and lives lost that such a perfect world would require. And, to the point in my head now, social media platforms that promise a certain image of social interaction, praise and approval without having to do any of the work that comes with building relationships and community. This is, after all, why they need an algorithm; to sell an illusion.

Ours is a culture that wants the end result without having to do any of the work, and if we do not get what we want we become angry at the people who are honest, practical, and humble. Honest about which goals are healthy and achievable, and practical about doing the hard work that is required to achieve the goals they have decided to focus on. The humility comes in the awareness of how much time and sacrifice any worthy goal requires.