The weight of luck
These have not been easy days for the world, and consequently for anyone with even a minimum amount of empathy for strangers. It is distressing to witness one historic event after another unfolding day after day, with little prospect of having any real power to change the course of things.
My intention was to start writing again once I finished my current read, which is yet another political-historical-economic book with a pessimistic outlook. I will get to that once I have the mental space for it, something that has been in short supply over the past few days.
It is strange to feel this kind of anguish when you are "doing well in life". I think that every two or three posts I end up mentioning my social and financial situation, which puts me reasonably above many of my peers in the country where I live. Barring some sort of disaster, and I make a point of knocking on wood whenever such scenarios cross my mind, that is unlikely to change in the very short term.
But it is difficult not to feel as though something of the sort is always just around the corner when the world is so volatile and, at the same time, so blasé.
We simply tolerate atrocities around the globe because our lives are, indeed, easier today than they were a few decades ago. The modern opium of the people helps enormously in sustaining this complete passivity. But I doubt we would be quite so passive if life were not overflowing with comforts, from access to the internet in almost every corner of the world to the countless delivery services bringing all kinds of goods straight to our doors.
It is an idea I still need to develop more concretely, in which I give some credit to the figures who made things that once seemed almost unimaginable possible, such as same-day delivery of essential goods - something Amazon manages to do. The consequences are dire, but the trade-off is clearly acceptable to society at large, which does not seem particularly bothered by the disappearance of street-level retail from almost every (major) city.
Being uncomfortable while immersed in a well of comfort is a very strange dissonance. I knew I would not be satisfied even after reaching this level of peace and stability in my life. Because I cannot truly feel at ease on the basis of my own personal satisfaction alone.
Circumstances like these make me wonder whether I am merely egocentric. Someone constantly seeking validation for values that I am fairly certain I developed simply by observing the world and its injustices, many of them inflicted on me, others on people like me. Why am I not more selfish, like so many people around me, and why do I not simply shut myself inside the bubble of a European middle-class life, with all of its many luxuries?
Guilt is one of the main reasons. It is a cliché to say that I witnessed many atrocities as someone who grew up around poor and peripheral neighbourhoods, but clichés become clichés for a reason. Through a great deal of luck, I managed to escape that cycle, a cycle that cut short and continues to cut short so many lives, brutally and, above all, prematurely.
But I also cannot ignore my empathy. Especially towards those who, in one way or another, end up "serving" me in my daily life.
One of the comforts I have is being able to pay someone to clean my home for a few hours once a week. She is younger than me and also an immigrant, but with less formal education and therefore classified as "unskilled".
After years working for a cleaning company where mistreatment was commonplace, her solution was to start her own business. I am one of her clients, and many of us share certain characteristics, from our family arrangements to the fact that one spouse has a job that allows them to work from home regularly.
Her husband, who was also the one who convinced her to leave her country of origin and try their luck on the other side of the ocean, works for her former employer, but as a window cleaner. In an alternative life, however, he would probably have been working in the same industry as I do.
Since that alternative path did not work out, his biggest investment at the moment is an unpaid programme that gives prospective candidates access to a study environment open 24 hours a day, where they learn programming through what is essentially a marathon. Unlike his peers in the same programme, the husband of the woman who cleans my home every week has to do physically demanding work from 7am until 3pm, Monday to Friday, and sometimes on weekends as well.
Under those circumstances, it was fairly obvious that he would not perform at the same level as someone who can walk into the study centre at 7am and stay until 10pm. And yet, apparently, he has managed to remain at least close to those peers.
This doesn't mean that he will succeed in a programme that ultimately selects fewer than 5% of its candidates at the end of each cycle. But it does suggest that another one or two attempts might lead to success and to an enormous change in both of their lives.
None of that, however, is guaranteed. Their feet remain firmly on the ground, and in particular the financial burden of maintaining the car she uses to travel throughout the metropolitan area is becoming increasingly difficult to bear. Not only because fuel prices must have risen by at least 30% over the past three months, but also because of the sort of problems that tend to come with an 11-year-old Peugeot diesel.
The solution would be to get a hybrid or even an electric car. As a childless couple, they could perhaps even get one of those small work vans that seem to be everywhere around the city. But with what money?
They have already financed a motorcycle so they can make app-based deliveries in their little spare time, and renting a house, even in the suburbs, "eats up" at least 50% of their combined budget. Whatever money is left at the end of the month is reinvested into her attempt to make a go of things on her own. Even the road trips they both enjoy so much have stopped happening during the holidays they manage to take.
It is not a life of misery. But it is much closer to survival than to living. And this is the situation faced by millions upon millions of other people in a country considered wealthy by global standards.
Perhaps I am simply too fragile to hear a story like this without feeling distressed. Distressed enough to consider offering them financial help so they could get a new car. But that would probably only create more problems for both sides, since my own savings are not large enough to allow for an act of "charity" such as financing a car.
I am very lucky.