I've been thinking all day about what I wanted to write about the process of buying a house and selling our condo, and while it's not even remotely over, I'm logging in at this point in the perhaps vain hope that it gets better from here (please knock wood when you read this). But I can't think of a more cogent summary than what titles this entry. It long ago stopped being about the amount of money things cost, or the complete arbitrariness of the market. It's become instead this misery of having relationships with people grounded in the conscience of money, and being in this place where you're not supposed to take it personally.
The last time I came upon this, I boldly proclaimed that the problem was Capitalism itself and that it all had to end. That was a fun thing to say at the time, but surprise, the simple weapon that will allow a member of the unwashed masses to take down a fully armored multi-national corporation from 100 yards away hasn't yet occurred to me. Yet I still really want to know what the answer to this is--how do you return some humanity to this system which governs all of these basic human interactions? Getting a loan, being hurried through signing form after form with only a dim idea of what we were signing, making offers on houses, changing our minds about making offers on houses, firing our real-estate agent because of our discomfort with him on that same human level--because I couldn't not take them personally, all of these things made me feel like I was A Bad Person. And I'm pretty sure I'm not.
1 comment:
A. You are NOT a bad person.
B. Your subject line is only true in purely human terms. You do a brilliant job of simply rejecting the terms of the economic system, but that's also what makes you miserable. What I mean by that is this: in economic terms, there was a great deal that didn't suck, i.e. the extra $40K you'll be making with a new realtor.
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