Some people know the power of joy.

My friends at Starbucks do. We greet each other, How are you? – Awesome! Big smiles brighten my day.

Today, one of the biggest smiles was being pushed around.

I’m supposed to be praying the morning office. Well, I am, but I can’t help but hear them passed my earbuds.

She’s moving to Tulsa to get married.

{How sweet!}

He says Tulsa’s got great weather. A great place to be. What’re you gonna do there? Transfer to a Starbucks down there?

She: He’s going to let me open my own photography studio.

{My feminist ears perk up and I want to be all
He can’t let you open that studio. His job is to support you in opening that studio. You’re opening that studio and you’re the one who’s going to rock it!
But then I almost miss the older man’s response.}

He: Oh don’t do that. Get it out of your system. You’ll need something real.

Walking away…

He: Photography’s a great hobby.

I’m staring. So I turn my eyes back to my computer screen. Stare at the words “Pray for Others” which is where I am in the office. Where I’ve been for several minutes.

I rest my elbows on the table and think I should be praying for her.

Instead, I’m thinking about what to do. What to say. Who to be.

You’re a priest! You can say something.

I watch her going back to work. The sudden arrival of new people in the shop means a line is forming.

I have time to think about what I’m going to say. The words overlap my praying the Lord’s Prayer and the concluding sentences. The dismissal to take the Good News into the world.

The Two Economies

He was trying to help, I’m sure. I know him, sort of. As we know the people we interact with occasionally. He wasn’t trying to hurt or discourage her. It was just a little advice. And we all know how free people are with their advice.

But what I heard was traditional advice from the old economy inexpertly offered to a young woman trying to make it in the new economy.

It was a clash of worlds.

And the clash in my vocation, my faith of how to be (or not be) in the midst of a generation gap.

The weeds of economic theory is certainly beyond my scope of understanding. But there is something which resonates in me between our generational divisions, our economic fortunes, and how we make it the new economy.

The generational impact of economic fortunes over the last decade cannot be overstated. In fact we too often understate it.

The group hardest hit by the Great Recession were minorities without college degrees. Second were whites without college degrees. Third were those under 40 with degrees. Over all, the biggest losers in the economic downturn were the working poor and the young.

The groups least effected (as a whole) were Baby Boomers and Silents. For those with degrees and at the upper end of the scale, the Recession was much shorter and have seen their own economic prospects return.

And now, the latest national report has the job and income numbers have fully rebounded to the pre-recession levels for everyone except the rural poor.

But the shift in economic fortunes has been going on far longer. And it seems that we are genuinely living in a world with two economies.

The Gig Economy

Like the transition in congregations as they grow out of one model and into another, in which we inhabit two models at the same time, our culture is in a long transition.

Stability is being replaced with flexibility.

• Where employers would train employees to do a job, we must now fake it till we make it. As an intern or as a solopreneur.
• We are replacing steady paychecks with small payments for services and products which we create in our own time and on our own dime.
• We forgo family time and weekend barbecues for our side hustles.
• Instead of getting good rest and coming to work at a reasonable hour, we’re now getting up hours earlier to work or staying up late to build a platform.

And we can say that we make these sacrifices because that’s what we have to do now. Or we can blow it off and tell each other to just get a real job. Both are right and completely wrong. Both are so now and so completely obtuse.

I worry about our health in the Gig Economy. About our priorities and what it means for us physically, emotionally, and spiritually to work ourselves to death.

I worry about the solopreneur lifestyle and what it means to have no real safety net. And what that means for all those people now expected to survive in such a Darwinian economy without the skill set. In any kind of meritocracy, we are building suffering into the equation.

I worry about the spiritual suffering of those lost in these turbulent waters with an economic undertow built to drown the strong and weak swimmers alike.

Such an economy as ours only seems fair. I suppose if we define fair as a deck stacked for the powerful to pass on power to the ones they choose is how we define fair, then it is.

But it’ll never be just.

Encouragement

Finally the line worked through.

Me: I’m not usually nosey, but I couldn’t help hearing him dump all over your ambitions. I want you to know that I believe in you. 

She: I get that a lot.

Me: But that doesn’t make it OK. I’ve seen friends succeed with just a camera.

She: I’ve been doing this for three years already. That’s what I’m doing when I go away for weekends. I’m taking pictures for clients.

What I wanted to offer wasn’t a fix or a pat on the back. Just the chance to openly acknowledge that she is not alone.

Thanks

Later, when I got my refill to leave, she thanked me.

She: Thanks for saying something while he was still here.

Me: [surprised] I know how that kind of thing can derail a day.

She: That’s him. He does that. I do get that a lot. I want to be like: But you do know I work at Starbucks, right?

Me: Right? He doesn’t get it.

She: I’ve got an engineering degree. But I’m doing what I want to be doing.

Me: Thank you.