They didn’t act the part glamorized on social media. Behind the scenes, they were privately in training to be the next in line for generational success.
I had to laugh inside when I saw one of the two high school students in a volunteer program at a Children’s Museum I was completing a college work study in. She was being dropped off in a BMW Z3, something uncommon to the commonwealth like myself at that time who already had a child just going through the motions of college to get it DONE. I learned from the other high school volunteer that this family’s home had been published in a magazine, one of the most extravagant homes on the water within their well-known prominent community. You would have never thought it as the convertible BMW Z3 child came in wearing jeans and a cotton shirt to my every recollection. Just the same, the other high school student who had volunteered to me the information about her classmate came from the same prestigious neighborhood. Her everyday blue jeans and sweatshirt hid her own secrets of prestige.
There was a younger boy who volunteered a few hours per day as well. He was so full of joy and energy as he would lead groups throughout the museum. He was so excited to tell me one day that he had met baseball player, Ken Griffey, Jr. at the Mercedes-Benz dealership who was buying a car there. The part he seemed to just brush through was that he was there because his dad was buying his mom one, too.
For another work study, my role was to engage with foreign exchange students to help them understand the ways of American life in college. They didn’t need me. These were foreign exchange students, selectively highly affluent children, who were attending college for an experience outside of their unspoken comfortable lifestyle back in their country. While knowingly able to afford splendor, they were best comfortable blending in, best by the jeans and shirts other college students wore around them. Here were some I’ll never forget:
A general’s daughter who others humbly explained in the manner that if you were to turn the pages of the Vogue magazine, you could imagine for her to have all that you saw the models wearing. She didn’t dress such part around campus, of course. Those knowledgeable of her background best described her life this way. This was not difficult to believe as one day, this general’s daughter innocently shared how someone’s son within her parents closest group of friends was secretly courting her from her country, having recently given her a Gucci watch and other gifts. I found my heart filled with warmth listening and watching her pure innocence for love and its amorous endeavors.
Another one was a daughter of a jewelry design company from her country. Yet another, gave me words of wisdom I should have already known having come from my own native country when I asked a group of students what was considered “rich” in their country. A very wise response that was quite an epiphany to what may already be taking into affect here on US grounds is, “In my country, there is no middle. You are either rich or poor.” Point quite taken. As I saw these young students go about their life experience in college, only with hunger for the journey, not a hint of worry of how they would afford each step of the way, it was to be understood which side of class status they were each in.
There were the male dominant, of course, carelessly going about life as the rest, embracing the fortune of being able to travel abroad to see for themselves college life in America without a father momentarily breathing over their shoulder of how to be. There was one in particular who quite interestingly entertained me with his confidence and candor. When I kindly dismissed his invitation to go out on a date with him, explaining to him that I was married and already had a child, this blue-eyed, curly blonde hair heir to his dad’s oil company quickly responded, “So?” Besides his response, he was kind and very much a gentleman like the rest of the exchange students who I found myself intrigued by, all having arrived here from different parts of the world.
Looking back now, those work study programs paid me to learn from those around me, not the reversely intended plan. What I had gathered were priceless observations, far from what my role had paid me to do.
Collectively, here is what I learned from those experiences looking back now which I have gratefully ingrained into my own conscience:
- Real affluence doesn’t have to dress the part to signify their worth, at least the confident ones I saw before me. These were the youth offspring of the affluent who just wanted to learn the ways of life from other people’s world, to see reality outside of their sheltered one.
- There was time for laughter and play, but clearly the affluent upbringing showed silent boundaries. It’s as if they saw their family heirloom initials invisibly around them, serving as reminders of how they needed to carry themselves at all times, from how they walked to how they talked.
- Their mindsets were clearly forward, seemingly fearless of risks. Rather, they expressed at times concern of what might not happen if they didn’t continue to move in the direction they were headed to go. There was this constant movement in their actions, even when sitting and conversing with others, there was purpose for their moments. They mingled with intent. They knew the value of networking with reason, not mere chatter as what they discussed were of prosperity and progress, not spite and surrender.
- Clearly they had been taught the ways of their family line of duty for success. There was this implicit mentorship evident within them. Although they went about their day following the agenda placed before them, as the child of the BMW Z3 drop-off shared with me one day how her dad had recently sat both she and her brother down to remind them of the importance of hard work, it was clear to me in the way she spoke of her dad’s talk that she had taken it all in with great responsibility to follow through in the eyes of her parents’ expectations for her part to continue where they would leave off.
Having come from mindsets of immigrant parents where hopelessness was the endpoint of time after time hopes and dreams to arrive at better and yet, never getting to such destination, I feel so remarkably blessed to have had those work study experiences with affluent children all around me. Because of the exposure I received, I learned to undo the very mentalities that would have perhaps suppressed my very own mind had I not been introduced to contrary perspectives.
Success is a destination that requires training and forward movement. There is no idling about it. There is this constant work to get there or continue its existence. While I saw these young children or young adults remember to laugh and embrace life, there was passion for finding and living for moments to arrive, not fall back to. They were trained to matter and continue to do something about themselves to keep this as truth, not eventually dwindle to a lie. Thus, their steps were directed with purpose, ingrained within them to follow the footsteps of their family bloodline. No doubt, so opposite of what I could see within the lives of the contrary I saw around me in my own reality growing up.
While the poor hope for their child to never become them, wanting better for them, reminding their children that they would never want the life they have, I, myself, am testimony that there was no direction on how not to become them either. There were just hopes with no works in place, offspring left to find their own path to “that other side”.
The parents of the affluent clearly had a different mindset for their own children. They were placing their children in the midst of “action”, not passivity. There was an investment vested in their children to continue where they left off, unlike the opposition where parents want their children as far away from what they have surrendered to.
Having heard and witnessed the talks and movements of their children, it was as if I could hear the words of affluent parents saying, If you want to continue to have the comfort of which I have brought you in, then do just as good as me or better.
The fear factor of never getting to what you never had is clearly different from the fear factor of losing what you have been accustomed to.
