Going on a Quest

During my work day, I get to peek in a lot of people’s houses—just a glance past somebody at their entryway, or a hint of living room seen past a cat lounging on a windowsill. I swear I’m not a creeper. I promise. I’m a delivery worker. These people paid for a thing and I’m getting paid to be on their porch. It’s chill.

Philly, like many other cities but perhaps more than most, has a huge divide between the hip/historic downtown district and the poorer outskirts. I’ve worked in both, though not really any parts that people like to spread scary stories about. Historic brick and tiled foyers, graffiti and trash on the sidewalk.

These days I work in a relatively poor neighborhood and sometimes the people who come to the door to sign for a package are wearing puffer jackets and hats like they’re about to leave, but they’re not holding keys or bags and I don’t think they’re actually going anywhere. The Big Light is on, no lamps or mood lighting. Often it’s a cold fluorescent tube fixture or a landlord special overhead fan. Ratty plastic blinds. My last apartment had the same kind, already broken by the previous tenants, but if I breathed on them wrong they cracked more. No curtains.

I had a different aim when I put down some thoughts for this earlier, and then I had a long-ass day at work after about ten other long-ass days in a row thanks to the big ol’ snow we got. I’ll get to it eventually, maybe. More of a rant. Right now I’m feeling a little gooey.

When you’re stuck in traffic behind some douchebag, or make awkward eye contact with a stranger on the street, that is just a tiny fragment of that person. You have no idea what’s in their house. But also: sneaking a glimpse at someone’s material belongings doesn’t tell you that much either, even if you’re a weird nerd who spends a lot of time thinking about the meaning and history underlying all kinds of items we accumulate over our lives. It’s more of a hobby for me than a way to connect with the customers who opened their door to get the thing they paid for. Plus I get to wonder what they could’ve ordered that was more important to them than an alternative to the oppressively bright Big Light.

Other people are completely mysterious. You simply don’t know what they’ve got going on. Is it possible that our possessions are the best tool we have to quickly communicate what our deal is to randoms out in the world? Yes. That’s why some things are status symbols. We solved it. But it’s not really a perfect system, and there’s the rub. We still have to talk about our feelings with each other to get it.

Gross!

Maybe this is where I’m headed with this: as I sit in my house with the heat running enough that I’m comfortable with sweater, in the soft glow of a table lamp, fighting off my helpful cat, I have a wildly different set of hopes and dreams and problems and irritations from people a few blocks away where I work, or across the street, or a few train stops away, or you. It is always like this. We (I) tend to forget this.

Can consumption give us a meaningful way to reach out to each other and be supporting characters for each other’s stories, or is it going to be “I like your shoes!” back and forth until one of us dies? Can we be a little more thoughtful to other people without getting products involved at all?

A couple of questions for homework, independent reflection, whatever you want to call it:

What do you want?

What do you have?