Between Hope and Dread

My 1230pm person is 70 years old and struggling to find work. He has to find a way to support himself after more than 5 decades in prison. He worked the whole time he was there, but made literally pennies per hour, none of which were contributed to Social Security. He has no other way to support himself except to work. Finding work in San Francisco as an older person with no work history, no technological literacy, and no social capital is not easy. My 130pm person is 30 years old, and works in tech. The company she works for recently raised additional funding because of its AI based technology that will automate systems that otherwise require engineers. Because of this, since I saw her last week, her net worth has increased by several million dollars.

Both of my patients are anxious. Both feel the precariousness of life – climate change, social upheaval, political uncertainty – and both feel that having “enough” would help them to feel less anxious. Neither of them is sure of what that enough actually is. For him, he needs to be able to pay rent and other bills and is calculating how long he is likely to be able-bodied enough to work. For her, she wants to be able to live comfortably in the Bay Area and raise a family. Both feel the precarity of neoliberal life (though one of them is living it) and both want to feel security instead. He is at the bottom, she is at the top. The problem for him is clear: more money means further away from the floor. But for her, the problem is less clear: since there is no ceiling, how can you tell if you are at the top? Without knowing where the top is, how do you know how far you are from the bottom?

My 3pm person lived in prison for almost 40 years. He says his problem is cowardice. “My brother has cancer. He texts me, and I see the text,” he says, “but I don’t respond because I don’t know what to say, and then I don’t even think about it again.” He hangs his head in shame. “I only know how to live in the now,” he says, “at some poi