On not having a place in this world

Imagine, you're standing on this hill, surrounded by trees which are filled with blossom, as Spring moves towards Summer. You can smell the wildflowers on the air as the sound of birds and other critters mixes with the gentle rustling of the tree leaves in the breeze. As you close your eyes and lift your face towards the sky you can feel the warm sunlight caressing your skin.

This is the moment when you realise that you're in a place where you're home. Where it's safe and everything is all right. Where in a moment you'll return to the house where you live alone or with others, but it's all because that's the way which works for everyone.


It was around the beginning of this century, probably around 2001 or thereabouts, that I last still felt somewhat like that. After that my parents began to grow cold towards each other and the atmosphere in the house changed. Not long after that my parents divorced and first together with my mother, then alone it was a continuous journey from one house and apartment to another, in search of a home.

At this point I'm staying in a temporary apartment, trying to figure out what to do next as the last weeks at this place come and go. My grand plans of moving to the Alsace region of France have run into the harsh reality of supply and demand. How will this continue? I do not know. I wish I knew.


Similarly, my struggle to get a job last year and early this year didn't result in anything. Supply and demand, I guess. In the end it's not about you as a human being after all. It's just capitalistic reality. Essentially it's about us being merely the cells in this organism called 'Society'.

For all my dreams and hopes I had as a child and beyond, the cruel reality is we humans have made for ourselves is that the value of a person - much like that of a cell in an organism - is determined by their contribution to the system. My situation isn't even the worst imaginable, and it pains me to imagine the situations others find themselves in. There's so much pain. So much unfairness and so much suffering that those affected try to ignore. Plastic smiles.

Are any of us truly happy by living in small, cramped, concrete or stone hovels, practically on top of each other? With small, grimy windows opening into an environment that is choking with the exhaust fumes from cars, trucks and buses, mixed with the acrid smells of cigarette smoke and stale beer.

Is this place where our children play on streets near traffic, breathing in polluted air and only ever seeing the blue skies when they look up at this small strip of sky between the towering buildings. Is this place 'home'?

This reality of 'making the best of things' isn't that different from that scene in George Orwell's famous novell 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' where this woman outside the main character's window is hanging up the laundry while singing one of those auto-generated tunes that play on the radio. Obviously poor, the woman finds a reason to sing even though she lives in a rundown building, in a state of abject poverty, just like practically everybody else.

Just like in that world which Orwell described back in 1948 in the midst of post-war reconstruction, there are the haves and have-nots. The reality is that the handful of people who have practically everything are perfectly happy with keeping things the way they are. They are doing fine, so why would they care? Why would they care about the rest of the population? Those just exist to do their duty. Like any good skin, liver or fat cell.


How many of us consider the impact that 'our' decisions have on the rest of our body? On the tissues that are suffering because we had to do that late-night party, that copious consumption of alcohol and the many cigarettes that got smoked. We do not pay them mind, because we expect them to bounce back. That's what they're there for, after all.

In that sense it's only natural for the rich and wealthy to not care about the have-nots, I guess.


Sometimes I think about what it would mean to me if suddenly I found myself among the rich and famous. It's something that could theoretically happen after all, depending on how well my upcoming autobiography (and the associated Patreon [1] ) do. Say, with the support of a legion of patrons I get my autobiography done and published, and it turns out to be an international best-seller.

Suddenly I find myself being flown around the world for talkshows in places I haven't been to yet, while the money comes pouring in. All of a sudden all of my worries about financial stability and a place to live evaporate. What would I do?

The answer to that is pretty much summed up by the first few paragraphs of this blog entry. I'd want nothing more than to have that happy home for myself, and everybody else. I'm beyond sick of this world in which human lives are essentially meaningless, merely feed for the machine, as relevant as a single skin cell that will reach the end of its lifespan and gets discarded.

I do not claim to know the answer to everything, but I do feel strongly that the world I want to see is one in which there can be room for actual happiness and self-exploration instead of this top-down enforcement of how we should be living our all too brief lives.

Because either life is precious, or it is not.


Maya



[1] https://www.patreon.com/MayaPosch