Enlightenment, avocado love and IRAs
Dear Rachel,
What do you do when that one friend comes back from a few years in the Peace Corps or woofing or backpacking around the world and acts like they now have it all figured out? It’s cute, and we’ve all returned home high on vacation. But if the truth really was something attainable on a world tour, then everyone who ever did a world tour would stay enlightened instead of ultimately settling for a career and a house or whatever. But you can’t tell them this … or can you?
- Bubble Burster
Dear Party Popper,
I mean, that one friend probably does actually have it all figured out. It’s just that the world we live in doesn’t have space for people who have it all figured out. It’s why they have to live in hostels and in rented rooms above farmhouse restaurants and other Narnia-like wardrobes. The question is not how to burst your friend’s bubble. It should be, how do you shield that bubble as long as you can from the horrors of the world?
– Pop goes the weasel, Rachel
Dear Rachel,
I can’t figure out the hate for avocados. Actually, it’s all love for avocados. Everyone is eating them on everything. Yet it’s still, ya know, the thing people love to hate on with Kids Today. Why is this the emblem for everything wrong with the youth?
- America’s Fruit
Dear Celebrity Produce,
Avocados are a freaking magical fruit. Not the kind that makes you toot – more like a magic spell: Avocadavo! The worst thing I can say about them is they’re more expensive than bananas. The second worst thing is that pit. No me gusta the pit. Other than that, I have no idea. Maybe it’s just intense jealousy that the fogeys in the room didn’t have ready access to this superhero of the grocery store when they were young and had it all figured out?
– The pits, Rachel
Dear Rachel,
I was at a distant relative’s funeral recently, and another distant relative started grilling me about my retirement planning. I’m 32! I haven’t had “just $10 a paycheck” to stash in my IRA even once in my life. How do these people think we’re saving for retirement when we’re much more worried about, oh I don’t know, eating and not getting evicted?
– 401 j/k
Dear Normal Person,
I swear this has to be one of the biggest mixed messages. Travel while you’re young! (This is wise advice, by the way.) And also: Start saving while you’re young! (Not terrible advice, but terribly at odds with the first advice.) And also: Manage the horrible impossibility of affording necessities like avocados and rent! Oh, and also pay for school. I’m starting to think we should all give up and travel the world until we convince ourselves we don’t need anything to feel happy. Nothing, that is, but some guacamole.
– Bon voyage, Rachel
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