Peter Schorsch
If you are the child of an extremely successful parent, you probably have things pretty good. Good for you.
Chances are quite high that you likely have a fairly cush job (if you even work at all), a comfortable life and take advantage of all that your fortunate situation has handed you.
Let’s face it; the children of the privileged class usually spend their lives in relative quiet, enjoying the finer things in life. There are legions of studies and books on this subject and it is the rare scion – rare, not unheard of – who has a scrapper’s mindset.
And that’s what makes Lauren Book stand out.
Every single person reading this blog knows her journey. And every single one of you knows her dad. This is not the place to repeat that.
But how many children of wealthy lawyers/lobbyists have had multiple surgeries on their feet from walking literally over 7,000 miles on behalf of a cause? How many put in well north of 60 or 70 hours a week and travel hundreds of thousands of miles a year championing a cause?
Let me put Lauren’s annual walk in context for you as just one example of her work ethic. Each year for the past six consecutive years, Lauren has walked the state over a 42-day period, most days logging more than a marathon runner and then repeating that day after painful lonely day with only a few breaks in between. In a typical year, she tops 1,000 miles – a thousand miles! – and what astonishes me is that most of those miles are logged out of site of the cameras and are completed on a lonely stretch of asphalt long after the crowds have dissipated.
So where am I going with this?
Lauren Book doesn’t have to do this. She could have her foundation and not put in ridiculous workdays. She could publish an occasional book, appear on TV and have a relatively enjoyable life and continue to achieve good things.
Lauren doesn’t have to run for office and deal with all that goes with it. Knocking on doors, attending local functions attended by eight people, or dealing with the snarky media questions – many of which will be, ironically, about her dad – or putting herself into what is, by ALL accounts, a dysfunctional legislative morass.
No, Lauren could stop and smell the roses, enjoy her work on behalf of kids and frankly, bask in the success of her hard work thus far. But she’s not. She’s running for the state Senate, putting her hat into the public arena and putting herself into the glaring and often unfriendly light of politics.
I gotta say, that from this corner of the universe, someone who has had to scrap and scrape to make a living, I have just one thing to say about that…
You go girl!
