When I was a child with the whole world and a whole life ahead of me I never, in all my imagining time, thought that I would end up, at forty-seven, with rotting teeth, a bald and strange head and no money. To find myself on benefits of one sort or another for over fifteen years, living in one rented house after another, and two busted marriages, three children and yet to still to have a dream or two left is surprising.
Born in a first world nation. Schooled in the ways of a first world nation. Lost in a first world nation.
I wanted to be on another planet by now. Literally. I knew this world would have a place for me to work my thinking magic. I didn't realise that you have to be what this world wants in order to get something material out of it.
I should have chosen my direction to suit my needs of now. How could I though? I then thought that teachers, parents, employers of my future self would have at least some of my needs at heart. I wish I was taught that most people have their own futures to work out and that mine was not something that any of them was interested in; my life was my own to sort. My path was my own to find.
Very rarely on this "path" of mine would I bump into one of society's "real" people; one of those people who, although part of the web that makes society such a limiting place, tried to help someone different from them to make a place that worked for that different person, in this case, me.
My mother has just phoned me out of the blue. Its her birthday today, she is seventy five years old. She said she walked past a shop the other day and saw her grandmother walking along, a reflection in the window. She realised it was her at seventy-five.
Seventy-five, forty seven. Her alive and sparkling me alive and down at the moment. One life each and both of us have had difficult times for chunks of our own existences.
She had two marriages. One with my father where she sired seven children which lasted for over twenty years and one which lasted a few months before her second husband died trying to find some work so that he could keep her in food, electricity and some form of warmth.
All seven of her children are still alive as far as I know.
How many of us reached our goals? How many of us feel fulfilled? How many of us feel we have lived our lives to the fullest capacity that it is capable of having regarding a life on planet earth?
I feel wasted. Like I have lived so little of what could have been possible.
Watching the airliners fly into the world trade centre towers on September 11th 2001, one of my brothers birthdays, was like watching something happen that I knew had to happen.
Why? Because you can't keep building a world to suit one group and expect the rest of the world to just keep taking it.
Yet, the World Bank, the United Nations, The World Health Organisation and many other leading organisations seem to be saying that they all want to change things for the better and to change them now rather than later.
Do they really want change now? Isn't it possible that the change is being forced upon them by the tides of change? Too many people becoming very aware that there is too great a disparity between those with and those without?
Millions die each year because of lack of resources. Millions live limited lives of limited dreams because of limited resources.
Millions spent each year on "things" that waste resources, the dome in London being one easy example. (Or is it wasted?)
Food thrown out by the thousand tonne each week in this country alone; sell-by dates (and the threat of litigation) make skipping this food a better proposition than letting any of it go to the needy and the wanting.
Clothing, furnishing, household effects of all kind buried in landfill sites rather than being moved on to those who would find a use for them.
We live in a country of drugs and drink and serious boredom. TV replaces conversation. Music is loud enough to fill the head and stop the thinking.
When the drugs, drink, and boredom aren't there then sectarian, biased, myopic thinking, the same that comes with organised religion, seems to be the other offering for those who want something different.
With both of these alternatives there come the lies and sadness.
There is the other side. The side of those that own most of this world. Those who are so right they can never be shown to be wrong without major upset. (Such bitter sounding words!)
