On the Silver Spoon Itself

My aunt—the beloved-and-generous one who hands out $500 checks to her nieces and nephew at Christmas—is rich. Like, rich rich. Like, lives off her investment income rich. She's my mom and my uncle's half-sister; the money comes in large part from her mother, but I also think that she got more money from my grandfather than her siblings did, through coincidences of chronology and alimony.

She lives in the Bay Area—she bought a sweet, rambly little house that she's never really furnished (it still has one of those dishwashers where you hook up the hose to the sink)—and she drives a twenty-year-old car with a broken gas gauge, and she never ever buys clothing, but she does buy cross-country plane tickets whenever the fancy strikes her, and she eats at great restaurants on a daily basis. She's on the board of an organization of young people with inherited wealth doing progressive philanthropy, and she's thinking about going to school to do a degree in social work. So she's nobody's pampered child of privilege with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement who doesn't understand that not everyone has the privileges she's had. That said, she's still been profoundly shaped by her experience with money (that is, having lots and lots of it).

She's only about ten years older than I am, and when I was little, I thought she had the best life I could imagine (when we visited my grandfather, she would be there riding her pony). When last I saw her, she referred to herself as "a damaged rich kid raised by damaged rich kids," and that's kind of true. She has trouble with people. She's very, very into holistic medicine and alternative nutrition, and is prone to being diagnosed with new and obscure conditions. She's not, you know, shoving the entirety of Colombia up her nose or anything in the manner of certain daughters of privilege one could name, but she's not the world's happiest, best-adjusted human.

I really do think that inherited wealth, in and of itself, can alter people in a negative way. It can obviate the responsibility to confront the disparity between your world and others' world--not just in terms of privilege, but in reference to very pragmatic things, like: "Is it a good idea to eat rotten raw meat?" (The World: No! My Aunt's Alternative Nutritionist: Yes!) It can also, of course, make other people unreliable, prone to flattery and dishonesty. It breeds instability, somehow, a disconnect between the internal and external worlds. This can lead to general quality of suckitude, where the disconnect is not recognized at all and enormous oblivion and entitlement flourishes (think Paris Hilton), or something more along the lines of my aunt's state, where the disconnect is recognized but not overcome, and the result is a person kind and well-meaning but weird. Then again, had my aunt had less crazy and/or awful parents, she might have turned out just fine--certainly, rich kids are not necessarily doomed to suck. I grew up with some pretty nice and normal ones. But I do think that lots and lots of money, because of its ability to remove one from the tumbling effect of the world, which polishes people like gemstones, sanding down our sharp edges with much friction, can isolate people. It's a danger that heirs need help to avoid, and my aunt certainly did not get the help that she needed in that department.

My family is rooting for my aunt; her siblings and my sister and my cousins and I all care a lot about her, and not just because of the checks she distributes and the dinners she takes us out for. But she's got an uphill battle--for her, I think, the money really has been more of a curse than a blessing.