FADED LEVIS AND TAILORED BLAZERS

I'm working in downtown Grand Rapids this summer, on South Division Avenue. The area is still developing, and I always find it an ironic juxtaposition to walk down Weston and see the fixed up facade and foundation of Rockwell's (a local bar and grille) smushed up right next to this torn up, forsaken, sagging space next door. The building is actually leaning and crumbling, as if a good kick in the bottom right corner would send it tumbling right down into dust.

Dust.

Each morning, I pass a few stony churches, a cheap motel, the friendly lime-vested security guard by the hospital, and a couple of ministries for the homeless and unemployed in Grand Rapids. I nod to the man slinking along in faded, tapered Levis and an 80s-style track jacket, plastic bag slung over one elbow.

Sometimes he nods. Usually he just walks on.

There's a couple of dudes and that one lady who hang out on the cement steps in front of the motel, smoking cigarettes early before the heat hits and their street gets busier.

I like mornings.

They feel right.

I also like my job. I work for an independent consultant who specializes in diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency--basically, he's working for social justice in the corporate sphere, and I get to write for him. I'm thankful for the job, and I'm learning a lot (more on that another day).

But some days, I head into the office to write for a bunch of our clients who are sealing and dealing, swapping and gambling on millions of bucks in corporate America and I wonder what the heck I'm doing. Because, despite the relevant and purposeful work that I think we're doing, that I think corporate America needs, it's just a world that doesn't jive with me.

Some days I can hardly stand it.

Some days I just want to scream--It doesn't matter!! Dust to dust, man! Your money, my pride, all of our foolishness--dust! The money makes me sick some days--it's just a bunch of arbitrary numbers and dirty coins and crumpled papers that we toss around, that we use to make some people powerful and some people powerless.

Not that money can't be used well. But most of the time it just seems like a gluttonous mess.

It just that my mornings make such an uncomfortable juxtaposition between the scraping by and the smooth sailing, by some people scrambling after coins in the street while others are bathing in riches, by some people people sporting goodwill track jackets and plastic bags and others tailored blazers and BlackBerrys.

It bugs me.

But I'm glad it does, because I'd be much more worried about my future if I didn't feel sick sometimes at that kind of weighty imbalance.

Instead, I've got an itch for a world that isn't so sadly comical. In that world, maybe the corporate gurus walk out of their offices someday and go take the dudes and that one lady on the street for lunch. In that world, these people might just start to care about each other. In that world, we might see the super-privileged begin to heave some of the heaviness off the underprivileged and the scale might just shift a bit closer to even. A bit.

It's my job to help make that world a reality.