One summer day, decades ago, we were returning from a wedding in Connecticut and driving through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. A big pickup kept advancing behind me and riding my tail. Every time I sped up to create distance between us, the truck would blink the hi-beams and close the distance. I kept wondering who was behind the wheel. Coming out of the tunnel, the driver turned on flashing police lights, and we stopped by the inner-lane Jersey wall.
I was pretty furious that I was pulled over. I jumped out of the car and ran up to the officer. The balding harbor cop said he pulled me over because I was speeding. I replied, slapping the Jersey wall, that I was only speeding because he kept running up my ass. I demanded to know why he kept tailgating all the way through the tunnel. He asked if I wanted a ticket or if I wanted to go to the station. In my anger, I said, sure, let’s go to the station so I can explain just how you forced me to accelerate with your poor driving.
His radio crackled, and he awkwardly backed away, saying, “please don’t speed in the future.” He ran to his truck and drove off. I stood there breathing heavily, amazed at how righteously pissed I felt. When I returned to the car, Helen said, “He could have shot you.”
Being a well-off white person from Montgomery County, it never even occurred to me that what I was doing was stupid.
Over the years, I have learned to recognize just how fortunate—how privileged—I am. I had a huge leg up in achieving my ambitions in many significant ways. I grew up in a loving family with few financial worries. They cared about helping their kids grow up to be happy adults, even when that growth might include a wrong turn or even failure. I grew up reinforced that my skills and talents were exceptional and that my choices were worth pursuing.
I was healthy and never had any serious illness or accident—not even the tiniest broken bone. Because of my family, friends, colleagues, and clients, I had the confidence to make choices that might have risks.
It’s not that I have led a charmed life. I have had my share of tragedies. My father was nearly murdered in a robbery at his store in 1980; my sister died young after a slowly debilitating illness caused by taking Fen-Phen prescribed by her doctor.
Those things don’t invalidate the notion that I swim in privilege and bathe in it unthinkingly like I breathe oxygen from the air around me. I benefit from my history, religion, skin color, culture, and education.
Even when presented with prejudice, I have been given the confidence to respond. I was speaking at a Folio:Show in Chicago a few years ago, and at dinnertime, one of the attendees joined me at the bar where I was eating alone, and we began a pleasant chat about the magazine business. She owned a small publishing company in Peoria that she said was doing well, “despite the Jews that own all the banks and newspapers.”
I was stunned at how casually she threw off that comment. I immediately said, “Hey, I’m Jewish, and I can’t believe you said that. What on Earth makes you believe that?” She gave a little laugh, “Oh, I don’t mean you.” But of course, she did. That moment was an outlier for me in my privileged life, but it sharply reminded me that it’s not an anecdote but a daily reality for many other people.
But the American Dream—that perseverance and hard work creates opportunity for everyone—is not an abstract concept for me. I see my advantages clearly. I built a business with the confidence that my talent, smarts, and experience would be enough to grow something substantial.
I recognize the difference between privilege and entitlement. Being personally blessed with privilege is a gift and being entitled to something is a right everyone enjoys. Confusing the two is arrogant, narcissistic, and unfortunately common.
I might think my successes have been built on savvy business knowledge and intelligent decisions when opportunities arrive. The reality is that I have made bad choices and ignored problems until they became toxic. I made poor hiring choices. I have fired people for the wrong reasons and kept others on the payroll long past their expiration date. I missed opportunities to grow the studio into new areas for no other reason than that I wasn’t interested. When the Great Recession eviscerated our business model, and many of our clients’ titles folded or reduced their frequency, I held onto our magazine launch even though it was losing money. My “savvy” business plan was shot to hell, and I couldn’t admit it.
But that is also the point. I could fail to make ill-considered choices because I wasn’t afraid to lose. It might seem obvious, but once you have success, it’s easier to be a bigger success. You can make risky choices because you are never risking it all. Even though the Great Recession was a terrible confluence of economic downturn (that heavily affected my client base) and the rise of the Internet that ruined the association magazine business model, AURAS was diversified enough to survive where other design firms failed.
Being successful allowed us to shrink, not fold. Success allowed us to buy our image processors, create a separate photography studio—and buy two buildings that housed AURAS. Success allowed us to attempt the risky project of starting our magazine. None of that would have been possible if I hadn’t had the help of family and friends to start AURAS and hadn’t known there were others on whom I could rely.
I think there are two kinds of privilege. First, the pass you’re given just because of who you are, where and when you were born, and the social environment that influences your life as you grow, and second, how you manage that privilege in building your life when you make your own decisions. Decisions gave me many advantages my great-grandparents made 140 years ago. I like to think I am a self-starting entrepreneur who created a business from nothing. In America, we take the strivings of our progenitors for granted. But I think I owe all the previous generations of my family an obligation not to waste the potential they have given me.
It’s not to build more wealth (although that certainly is not a bad thing) but to use your given assets to do things that advance your talents and help improve the world, or at least your corner of it. In Judaism, there is a concept known as Tikkun Olam. or Repairing the World. Simply put, it means leaving the world a better place than you found it. It is a call to actively seek ways to improve the life of every person you can influence and allow them to pass that generosity onward. At AURAS, I strive to build a community based on peer respect, inclusiveness, and personal responsibility. I promoted skills and talent and asked those who learned new ideas or techniques to teach the rest of us. Having built a design practice, I could volunteer all our unique skills and assets when called to help.
I have tried to inspire others to follow in my footsteps, become involved with worthy causes, and make political and social decisions based on their sense of fairness, justice, and compassion.
Tikkun Olam is ultimately about creativity, finding ways to add to this life’s knowledge, philosophy, and happiness. I hope I have been successful in using AURAS as a vehicle for enabling all the people around me. That’s been my privilege.
