Cold Coffee Chronicles

My husband and I have been glued to this season’s White Lotus. The scenery is devastatingly beautiful, the acting is sharp, and the tension is palatable.

You already know this though.

In episode 6, there’s an exchange between Porria and the hunky Essex hottie Jack (that detail isn’t relevant but I mean cmonnnn) that embodies a theory my husband and I discuss kinda regularly. Portia states, in her sad girl pouty way, that she wonders if she’ll ever be satisfied with life l. To which Jack retorts something along the lines of, “this is the best bloody fuckin time to be alive ever”.

My husband looked at me in bewilderment and was like “yes! This show gets it!” And I totally agree; White Lotus gets it. And what is the “it” we’re trying to “get” here? Well, my fellow armchair philosophers, it’s that life is really fucking good right now in terms of general quality of life. At least for the American population that calls itself middle class and up, there’s not a whole lot that we can complain about right now. Don’t bite my head off yet, keep reading.

Maybe I’m off my rocker because I know there’s plenty of societal elements that can be improved upon (women’s rights being taken away, affordable healthcare, the skyrocketing cost of living). I truly think that life for people in the demographic watching and represented in WL is shockingly smooth. We simply choose to be blind to it, or we’ve never been taught to see it. Hot Jack is onto something here.

To give another example, back when I was working for a Fortune 500 sales company, there was an executive who talked about how he wished was alive in the 50’s. “Things were simpler then”, he’d say as he sucked back his liquor at the company fueled happy hour. “People knew their roles, people didn’t complain about hard work, blah blah blah” you get the gist. Basically classic Boomer rhetoric.

This “yearning for yesteryear” is the perfect example of how people refuse to see how fortunate they are to be alive right now. Guess what dude, if you were alive in the 50s with a family and in your mid-30s (like you are now) you’d probably have fought in WWII and possibly perished before you could enjoy your picturesque dysmorphic Leave it to Beaver fantasy. To take it a step further your family could possibly become infected with polio and perish before you even made it home! Or maybe your wife dies in child birth because maternal mortality rates were abysmally high! From 1955 to 1985 maternal mortality rates decreased by 99%!

So, yeah, in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the corner of the world the White Lotus watchers (and the characters) reside in is pretty sweet. When else could a human access unlimited knowledge at the touch of their finger tips? Remember encyclopedias? Yeah. Maybe my old boss would like to tote around a half ton of those bastards every time he moves. Lol.

Do you like ice cream? French fries? Modern medicine? Driving a car with the ability to carry all 3 of the aforementioned things in it? If you answered yes, then don’t pine for the 50s. Don’t complain about trying to be satisfied, Portia.

We live in an age where it’s easy to be disillusioned because we’re faced with challenges that feel super heavy, even if they aren’t. Remember when everyone shit on Prince Charles for flipping out because his pen wouldn’t write? I thought it was ridiculous, but I’ve honestly done the exact same thing I’m sure.

Some problems are real, and some are first world. White Lotus rocks because it’s satire makes me laugh and then flinch because I’ve complained about finding your purpose, too. It hits home because I find myself wrapped up in bitching about how I feel depressed while sitting on my cozy couch eating Chex mix watching Portia eat ice cream and say the same thing. The fact that I can sit on a cozy couch and eat Chex Mix though is the true testament that these probably are “the best bloody fucking time to be alive ever” or however he said it with that jawline that could cut glass.

Maybe it’s crucial to my sanity, and possibly the sanity of others, to recognize that there’s no satisfaction unless you force yourself to be cognizant of how rad life is. Don’t spend your minutes wishing to be in another era of time. Life could be way worse, so get on the internet, grab your snacky-snacks and be glad you don’t have cholera or something 🙂