I was walking past Smallsteps room today - a room she was meant to be cleaning - and saw her sitting in a drawer, playing with her toys. When she saw me, she poked her head up and said, "I reckon I could live in here".
In some parts of the world, that might be commonplace.
One of the "problems" with having a global view of the world these days, is seeing and hearing about how other people live their lives, and the challenges they face. I remember when I was seventeen and ill and a doctor told me I might not make it, and then listening to my friends complain about their parents not giving them the car for the weekend, or a curfew time. But, now we see this at a global level, where for instance I had a hard day cleaning out our garage, which was a lot of work, but at the same time, we have a garage.
While we can only ever live our own experience, there seems to be a lot of pressure these days to hide away anything that might make others feel bad about themselves. I see these various headlines in Australia singling out some influencer for showing off the house they just bought, and getting all the negative comments about how "it must be nice to afford" and "this is tasteless, we are in a housing crisis". Those influencers make money from people who probably should be spending less time on social media, and more time at work.
I feel like society has become far less supportive of those who might succeed, and far more bitter. Maybe it is because we are surrounded by cherry-picked success, and don't spend as much time in reality, that it seems like everyone is succeeding in life, but us. One of my colleagues was saying the other day that he gets jealous when he sees people on his social feeds doing all these great things, and says "how can they afford to do this all the time" - but it isn't the case, is it? Because what he is seeing is a curated selection of highlights from hundreds, if not thousands of people.
Even if you have 250 friends and they each only get a week off per year, it means that at any one time, there is on average five people on holiday. If they change their car every 5 years on average, someone is buying a new car every week. And, the algorithms favor these highlights too, which puts them in our eyeline daily.
Well, for those who waste their time on "social" media.
So anyway - I was cleaning out the garage today, because I need the space for wood from the trees we took down last week. Tomorrow, the neighbors are coming to help me cut it into smaller pieces and we are going to do some grilling and offer drinks and dessert on top. Plus, depending on if they want it, we will also give them some wood. I thought there would be a bit more, but regardless, I don't mind giving most of it away, because we get ours cheap from my wife's extended family anyway. It is just nice to spend some time together.
Inn a world where people are disconnecting from each other, spending more time on screens, isolating onto digital islands, it is nice to do things where people are being human, doing human things - like chopping some firewood. The other day, one of the neighbors was sounding a bit like me, talking about how AI is going to replace our jobs, but then what will we do? As I told him, I think that it is just going to be another social gap, like wealth, health, education, and opportunity. There will be the people who are socially healthy, and those who are isolated.
I can guess at who will be happier.
And while there is a lot of things out of our control in this life, we do all have the power to spend time building relationships with others. No one really need be lonely, do they? Yet it is it is so common around the world it is being labelled an epidemic. Surrounded by people, a thousand ways to connect - people are isolated.
Choosing to live in a self-styled box.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
