Today I wrote about 2 new chapters of my little story. I also played guitar in the amazingly perfect weather and had some nice conversation with new friends.
And yet because I don't know where I'll be sleeping tonight, and because I have no income stream or "normal" job, I feel in many ways like a lesser member of society...
When I'm trying to find somewhere I can sit and write without having to buy something...
When I'm trying to find a bathroom or a place to change or somewhere just to be for a little while...
In this country, if you don't have money, you must blend into the background, hide away. There is some public space, but it is mostly outdoors and even parks have curfews.
And like spikes on the top of walls to keep the birds off, we've placed bars on the benches so you can't sleep, even when no one else would be around.
There is nowhere very safe or welcoming unless you're a customer, and even then, you're viewed with some suspicion if you're not in and out, like some kind of consumption machine.
In many ways I am glad that I don't make enough to pay taxes, because the majority of my tax money would be going to violently bullying the poor in other parts of the world, and the rest of it would be going to shutting us out here in the homeland.
Yes, I would like to have an apartment, which I can't really have without a regular job. I would like these things and am trying every day to get them.
However, the goal of my life (when I'm my best self) has never been to fit into society's box of what makes me worthwhile. I'm poor and getting poorer, but that does not define me.
Because today, I created. I used words to tell a story, to sing a song, to paint a picture of the mind. Art, Music, Poetry, there is a currency for a much more open society, a society where we don't put bars on the benches and close the parks at 11pm. We make better benches, and we don't kick people out of their homes because they can't afford them. We build homes for those who need them.
I'm not saying build me a house, and though it'd be cool to be pointed toward any jobs or cheap apartments or whatever, that isn't my goal in writing this.
All I mean to say is that there is so much more worth in being who you are, in honest expression of your most genuine self, than there is in chasing after financial stability. It's hard because you are going against the grain, but if you see something wrong, you can't solve it by participating in the cause of the problem. You can bandage a lot of symptoms by being a good person in a bad world, but you can help be the cure by flipping the world on its head, caring more about people than whether or not you're a good person.
As Nathan Johnson says, "You don't have to play by their rules if you don't require their rewards."
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