Tag: poverty

To Find True Freedom

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

We get used to things. I’ve discussed habits probably as much as anything else on here but this is slightly different. This would be more about adapting. We adapt to our environment then. When we stay in one place or in one environment long enough it becomes normal and we find a way to at the very least survive. In the extreme you could have someone going from a position of power and wealth to one of poverty and subjugation, think of any successful class based revolution for example. If they didn’t end up getting their head chopped off, end up in front of a firing squad or find a way of smuggling themselves out of the country; there is a good chance they would have to either adapt to their new way of live or die. That then is an extreme example and for me right now I am as far from that as I can think. I have adapted to my surroundings though, my admittedly comfortable surroundings.

For me this adaptation has been more about a change in a way of life. Having spent ten years as a traveller living wild and being free – that is the version my romanticised ego would like to portray – I found myself in this little village by the seaside. It was only supposed to be a couple of months, the winter at most with spring bringing new adventures. There is no need to go over this years events but as I’ve previously discussed they have been habit changing to say the least. Now though I potentially change these new habits again and see whether further ones are created or old ones return. Today is Friday, on Sunday I leave my home by the sea.

Undoubtedly there has been a lot I’ve enjoyed about life here. I’m beside the sea and when not rammed with summer tourists it’s slow and chilled out. It is though a bit backwards and insular which is enough to push me away, but it has also shown me enough to imagine a new way of life is possible. There were many times in my past travelling in which I openly admitted to being exhausted and tired of constantly moving and packing but I also really enjoyed the discovery and constant new in front of my eyes. I’m still after all this time like a child when I see something previously unseen. This time has made me realise I am in my heart a wandering traveller. It has also made me realise how easily I could settle somewhere too given the right conditions. It’s all about balance apparently. This mythical never been seen or fully understood beast called balance. But you can’t have balance when you want it all.

As I pack my now enlarged pile of stuff I realise I am happy to move on while also not being entirely keen on the exhaustive side of this moving on. The stepping into the unknown excites and the prospect of being free is overjoying. As I would have discussed yesterday though had I not got distracted by Miley Cyrus, freedom is an entirely mental construct. We need to find freedom internally, allow the mind to accept the ever increasing randomness of existence and responsibly live in the moment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re stuck in the endless toil of menial labour or sailing the ocean. Admittedly one is probably easier to feel free in and we can do ourselves favours with the environment we exist in, but as I said, it’s how we approach existence that matters. One more moment before the next then in this constantly testing journey to free the mind. Maybe that would be a good habit to create. I already have the key after all. I could get used to finally being free. Just be careful not to want it too much.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay

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If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s being distracted from the current book I’m reading with another. I envy these fast readers who can sit down and complete a book in a few days. I’m more of a few weeks to a few months depending on the distractions around me type of person. There’s one book I’ve been reading for nearly a year now, I really enjoy reading it too so it’s not as simple as it may seem at first. I wonder if I’m a victim of how we process entertainment these days. I’m not sure I like calling myself a victim but more I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in the culture of short bitesize moments of pleasure.

I love a website called Aeon – which I’ve written a piece on here about before – that has some incredibly interesting articles. They’re not always a light read, not difficult but sometimes they require more effort than something on a website devoted to football. The articles on there are usually about three to four thousand words and despite knowing they’re interesting and that I can learn from them; a combination of the effort involved in the length and with the mental effort required slightly above minimum, I’ll not always bother. I prefer fiction books to non-fiction even if the topic in the non-fiction is potentially really interesting. Partly this is because I genuinely enjoy stories and the way meaning and message can evolve in this style.

The more I write about this I suspect I’m just lazy and ill disciplined. Aeon requires a bit more effort than football news and non-fiction potentially more than a story to follow and get into. I am leaping from one extreme to the other though, this is never a black and white argument unless I generalise which I seem to have been doing. This piece today was going to be another review and as seems to be a bit of a trend it was going to be a play. Dario Fo‘s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay to be precise. I’ve mentioned Dario Fo in a previous review of one of his plays, Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. He wrote political and social plays on the whole and this is a large part of what has drawn me to him. Take into consideration everything I have mentioned and you can see what leads me to a play. Something that’ll take me one to two hours to read followed by that rosy sense of accomplishment.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay is the story of two couples caught up in different situations in which people push the boundaries of stealing. The prices in the supermarket increase once more so the women riot and take what they want, only paying a minimum compensation to the shop. “I paid half price for half my goods”. While the husbands get caught up in similar as the canteen at work increases the prices and the workers simply serve themselves. Unlike the wives though the husbands take a stance against this seeing it as stealing. What ensues is a comedy involving fake pregnancies, avoiding the law and hypocrisy, all as Fo dissects the moral arguments behind whether there can be such a thing as justifiable theft.

The varying levels of hidden meaning in stories is what draws me to fiction. We can analyse what the playwright or the author intended with certain bits. I may not have appreciated it much at school but it is something I certainly enjoy now. For example, despite not having the most flamboyant of styles, I enjoy Sartre’s fiction far more than his non-fiction, even though they’re both variants of his philosophical discourse. Maybe lazy and ill disciplined is in itself a lazy understanding of something which as I’ve already mentioned is not a black and white issue. Interpretation for me is everything, and can’t pay won’t pay, I suspect I know what I would do.

Marcus The Man

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Footballers have a reasonably well known reputation for being a bit thick. This is probably a little unfair and is as much down to being constantly under a media fuelled microscope. At any opportunity they’re straight on the front page; from Gazza being a drunkard, Rooney sleeping with prostitutes who happen to be grandmas, Raheem Sterling getting a misunderstood tattoo, Cantona fighting xenophobic racists and David Beckham’s new haircut. There are an infinite number of examples but these are the ones which spring to mind immediately and which also probably show my age. If you take any spectrum of society and put it in the spotlight for long enough you’ll get exciting stories you can smuggly judge them over while feeling morally superior. It just so appears though that one of them has gone and reversed the trend.

Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United and England striker, has used his fame to pressure the government into fulfilling their end of the social contract and feeding the 1.3 million children on free school meal vouchers. Ordinarily they would stop as term time ended but with the unprecedented events relating to the coronavirus this year there have been calls for the scheme to extend throughout the six weeks of summer holiday too, as will be happening in Scotland and Wales. The government initially rejected his call, with some MPs putting their rather callous foot in it, but with widespread coverage of his request over the last twenty four hours they’ve been forced to back down and make a u-turn. There’s nothing politicians like less than admitting they were wrong and being forced to change their mind.

They claimed they had already put aside £63 million to help poor families and that this would be sufficient. Providing free school meals over the summer will cost another £120 million, at £15 per week per child, which dwarfs the previously allotted money. Now either they’ve drastically underestimated the number of children living in poverty or the £63 million was insufficient and nothing more than a token gesture for appearances sake. Why they were willing to take on a hero in the eyes of many on this is anyone’s guess, but they did and they lost. This isn’t the first time a footballer has used his position to try and achieve something positive but it is the first time I can think of that the end result has been so positive and will help so many people. I can imagine there’ll be a few more kids wanting to play as Rashford in the park from now on.

Chasing That Vitamin D

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The sun came out today and it was magnificent. Actually the sun has been out for about a month but it was also a massive fifteen degrees which makes it almost feel like you’re somewhere exotic. Having spent years chasing the sun a younger version of me would have scoffed at my excitement but a younger version of me hadn’t just spent the whole winter in this bizarre, dark and wet land. This undoubtedly plays it’s part and can be compared to that time when I lived in Ibiza and it rained for the first time in six months. I felt unadulterated joy and happiness, similar I imagine to a farmer in the Sudan. Actually a little less because I wasn’t starving, in the poorest country in Africa and relying on that rain to survive so it literally wasn’t the same, but I can say with certainty it was somewhere between there and how I would feel if it started raining now.

The moment I realised I was experiencing a form of happiness was then I was sitting in my car, the fifteen degrees needed a little boost. I could feel the sun shining on my arm and after a while I could feel the heat building, I was cooking a little and I felt the vitamin D coursing through my body. It was the strangest sensation but I could feel the joy emanating from that spot. It was at this moment that I realised I was less content about being here and not somewhere warm than I suggested about a week ago. Don’t get me wrong nothing has fundamentally changed but I definitely started craving just hanging out of the beach, drinking some beer, eating some food, napping, the typical things people do. It was at this point I started imagining I could happily visit Costa Rica of all places. I have heard talk of it previously so this wasn’t entirely out of the blue but it was definitely a nice little fantasy that managed to take me away from the present for a bit. Interestingly enough it was when the sun came out that I wanted to leave and not throughout the whole of the winter. Our minds are confusing little pests sometimes.

I wonder what summer is going to be like here. I’m in a little touristy area beside the beach and arguably it’s what I’m after just not quite the foreign version I’m used to. My friend was horrified I was drinking beer on the beach the other day as apparently it’s illegal. I suggested he need to sort his life out. He said the same to me. Costa Rica it is not but when I imagine people stuck in blocks of flats in big cities right now I realise once again how bloody lucky I am and how in truth I don’t long for anything other than what I’ve managed to find myself. I forget to see what surrounds me sometimes. We all do. I don’t beat myself up over it, it’s just good to remember and notice sometimes. South Sudan it is not. In fact, arguably it is somewhere between there and well, anywhere. At least it’s somewhere.

Fat Bastard

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I was going to talk about something serious, intellectual and philosophical. Minds would be blown by the insights, people would never be the same afterwards, life would forever be viewed through the lens of a new prism previously unknown to exist. Prior to the moment of world changing magic though I made the fatal error of some self-indulgence on one of these health and fitness websites. It appears I’m not healthy. There is something called a Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR for those in the industry. It is a way to see you metabolic age which apparently peaks at about seventeen years old and is basically a good indicator of our bodies actual age. It turns out mine is thirty-nine years old and unfortunately according to the Gregorian Calendar that is not an age I will reach for another five years. It appears all those feelings of aches and pains actually mean something other than I’m just soft, like to complain and feel sorry for myself. I am just soft, like to complain and feel sorry for myself clearly as evidenced by this piece but it’s not always nice to be proved right when it means I’m proving I’m not in good shape. Apparently I need more exercise, sleep and leaner proteins.

I also discovered I have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 26 which means I am ever so slightly overweight. I am though 14.5 stone, 90 kilograms or 200 pounds depending on where you’re from, and six foot three or one metre eighty-eight also depending where you’re from. I’m a reasonably big man, and recently I’ve been trying to build a little more muscle, not much but a little. What does this mean for my BMI then? Muscle is heavier than fat, so how can I be sure whether I am overweight or just putting on more muscle? That has always been my issue with things like BMI and why all of these things needn’t be taken too seriously or dogmatically. Apparently I should ideally weigh between 10.8 – 13.7 stone, 68 – 87 kilograms or 152-192 pounds, but after being ill for three weeks once in India I weighed 68 kilos, I could see ribs in my back. I was not healthy. This isn’t me making excuses, I know my little tummy could be shrunk back but I don’t agree with their description of a healthy weight.

The final one was body fat but I couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to measure my waist and hips just to discover what I already know. So I need to lose a little weight and become a little healthier. I wouldn’t say I’m unhealthy but clearly I can’t say I’m healthy either. Ultimately though as I suggested earlier I take these things with a pinch of salt and not a serious pinch at that either. As a species we’re not healthy. We may have eradicated poverty in a lot of the western world but we’re all addicted to at least a few consumables like sugar, salt and fat. It’s good to get a little shot of drive to give me that little boost to continue my exercise and better diet. I’m just sore all the time and tired with it. I am thirty-nine after all, it’s all part of getting old. Saying that at this rate I’ll probably be in my mid forties by this time next year.