February 24, 2024

#6 - Peace Through Commerce

The final part of a story about flourishing

In June of 2023, some incompetents lost some paperwork and pushed my client work back a month. I would have taken it in stride had it not been for one nincompoop wrongly saying to someone (and it getting back to me) that it was my fault for not filing the contracts on time. Bullshit. I had the emails to prove otherwise and I fired them off to her and some higher ups with not just any words, but choice words. Haute couture words. Words like the two-weeks only peaches at the farmers market. I don’t have many triggers, but somebody saying I didn’t do something I was supposed to when I in fact did is one of them.

I lost an infuriating amount of time and money, and an opportunity with another client I said no to in good faith that this contract would pan out in time based on assurances from people who would know. I lost out because I was loyal to the wrong master — an institution as opposed to my deep sense of direction and purpose.

I was so incensed, so filled with rage at myself for relying on some mid-level bureaucrat fuckers to give me work, that it lit my ambition on fire like that scene in Gone With the Wind where all the cabooses full of artillery blow up. I was Scarlett O’Hara, ready to stitch a dress out of portières, marry an old man to pay off my property taxes, and ride my buggy through a shantytown with a pistol in my lap so I could create my own opportunity. I spoke to my coach on the phone and, after calming me down, she helped me tap into my rage.

Rage. Our most underrated, underutilized emotion. In a classroom full of your many selves, rage is that student in the back corner reading Paulo Freire and peering over her spectacles from time to time mumbling motherfucker. Rage is the catalytic converter that redoxes our values as mere platitudes into the prose of a manifesto. Passion spills over, but rage bubbles over. The fermented cousin of hope, rage is the chaotic sourdough starter in an otherwise orderly kitchen, converting light and germ into a substance with purpose. Rage, my friends, is the punchy mustard in the sandwich of change.

In September 2023, I rage-launched Los Compas Coffee, a coffee roasting operation headquartered in the northeast corner of my garage. After being gaslit by my client, my time of idly worshipping the drum roaster I had acquired from Ron the ex-copper had come to an end. I worked like a fiend for the latter half of summer, bringing a brand concept to life with a designer I admired, finalizing packaging and label finishes, deciphering the witchery of the US Postal Service, and setting up the innumerable bells and whistles on my e-commerce storefront on Shopify.

I converted my dining space into a fortress of Rubbermaid totes full of everything from packing supplies to beans shipped in jute bags from far off places like Ethiopia. Really special beans cultivated by farmers on ancestral land in Mexico, Colombia, Kenya, and Brazil. I love commerce for this reason — it binds people who would otherwise have no connection to one another in a mutually beneficial exchange. Capitalism can render evil, yes, but it can also bring to bear the best of many of us.

As I continued to build in my quiet fury, I thought about how much grief I was channeling into Los Compas, and how those feelings weren’t just borne of the moment. They were resting in me as the anguish of generations before me, women toiling and yearning for freedom, choices, and agency. I felt grief at the dissolution of the American dream for so many, and guilty for still feeling resonance with the idea, for having the resources and ability to still touch it. I also felt emancipated. Even if I failed, knowing I could get here was permanent.

I’ve seen all this before with my parents. Building a small business together in America gave them a vessel for the complex emotions attached to leaving their homes and families in India. Turns out guilt, resentment, abandonment make excellent sauces. The business didn’t stir their feelings away, it made them digestible, even nourishing.

For immigrant families who didn’t believe in therapy, this was the next best thing. The pursuit of the American dream, building a strong, upwardly mobile future for families…these are reasons people start small businesses. But I am confident that deep down there is also a yearning to get lost in something, and to render an unending supply of grief and loss into something useful.

As I experience this myself, I can’t help but want it for my students who have their own rage to channel. The vision for the future is a better one — to provide opportunities for young people to create and own enterprises that encompass all of their lived experiences, but also provide resources and support that help them safely examine their mental health. Progress happens in generations.

For the young people I work with especially, entrepreneurship education for all is an essential part of restorative justice. To teach young people how to create, to give them the knowledge, power, opportunity, and resources to self-determine and build something for themselves, is liberatory.

One of the reasons this week’s issue of The Mustard Sandwich is so late is because I’ve been conducting empathy interviews with students all week and poring over the recordings each night, capturing the brilliant words and ideas of my students in a vision board. Since this post was rather wonky, I’ll close with some profound thoughts one of my students shared with me in response an impromptu question, “What do you think it takes to lead young people today.”

I’m sharing this audio clip with my student’s permission also as a gift because I realize how the negative narrative around young people impacts all of us and our hope for the future. One of the things I love about my job is that I get to witness all that our youth have to offer on a regular basis. That is why many of us tolerate the system, because it is a conduit to moments like these.