Entering the New Age of Reason

It's not for nothing that Anne Enright won Britain's most prestigious literary prize last year for her novel The Gathering. Although it's about an Irish family and the reverberations in one sibling's life from the molestation, alcoholism, and, ultimately, suicide of one of her brothers, like all good books, its words extend far beyond their slim 5-inch by 9-inch frame. One line, though I can't find it now despite giving up a entire morning to do so, basically says that money doesn't change people; it just allows them to be who they really are. But I've been wondering in the midst of what is politely called our "economic downturn" if the opposite isn't true. Each time we have to make a decision on how to spend our limited resources, we are making a tiny declaration about what matters most to us. If you can afford to go skiing in Aspen one weekend and to St. Bart's the next, you never have to come down squarely in any camp.

There's one scene in particular that makes the point about the limitations of spending power. Veronica Hegarty, the protagonist, goes into a Dublin department store and realizes that because money is no object, every object holds the same value for her: 

"There is nothing here that I can not buy. I can buy bedlinen, or I can buy a bed. I can buy posh jeans for the girls or a Miu Miu jacket for myself if it doesn't look too boxy. I can buy the plastic Branbantia storage jars that I am now staring at on the third floor..."

Nothing means anything because the one thing she can't buy, of course, is her brother's return. 

I'm not talking in this post about people who have to make untenable choices between buying their blood-pressure pills, say, or buying breakfast. Nor does this observation include those who have lost their jobs or their savings, have nothing to tide them over, and no real prospects for recovery. And this is not a time to be smug, because it feels like that could happen to any of us at any time.

But for most of us, the daily calculus over how to spend our money--whether to get a babysitter for this Wednesday in order to attend a lecture or to save the babysitter up for a weekend night out for a dinner with close friends--is bracingly clarifying. For most of us, these either/or decisions aren't new; they've just come into sharper focus with the economic news of the past few months. The difference is that we no longer have to apologize for denying our kids a Wii or a Princess Barbie. We don't have to apologize for telling our friends that we can go out for a burger but not for a steak. It's as though we have suddenly entering a new Age of Reasonableness, personified by the calm demeanor of our president-elect. Suddenly, values are in vogue. 

Even the very rich who really are different from you and me are trying to act somewhat like the rest of us. A piece in yesterday's New York Times's "SundayStyles" talks about how even for people not particularly affected by the plummeting stock market and the shrinking job market, being in the market for anything conspicuous, be it watches, cars, or fancy vacations, is in bad taste these days. 

"It's now chic to cut back," [says Alexandra Lebenthal, president of a wealth management firm]. "If you ask people if they are going away for the holidays, they say, 'No, we're just spending a very quiet holiday with family'--instead of 'We're going to Anguilla for Thanksgiving.' "

The thing is, spending time with the people we love is what has mattered all along. Everything else is just a distraction.