First World Problems

We have all come across people who do nothing else as much as they complain. In fact, if they have nothing to complain about then they wen complain about that. I know such a person, and what such a person said the last time I sat next to him in class angered me. 

"I'm starving!" he cried out. Nobody paid him any attention. Usually I sit on the other end of the classroom, far away from him but that day I sat in his complaints lair next to my fellow group project members unbeknownst to the fact that he would turn up, seeing as he was not there the day before - and I had not expected him to sit in his original spot anyway seeing as his group members sat elsewhere. "I am so hungry!" he tried again, looking around for any source of attention, his face drooping to emphasise the emptiness of his stomach. Before he tried the third time, he caught some attention, but from the wrong person: me, and boy was I riled up. 

"When did you last eat?" I asked. He turned his head slowly like a sleepy owl and stared at me in confusion - he expected someone to agree and mope along with him, not somebody who wanted to challenge this notion that he thought everyone agreed with. "Sorry?"

"When did you last eat?" I repeated. 

"What's that got to do with anything?"

He really annoyed me now. "You can't possibly be that hungry. When did you eat the last thing you ate?"

He paused, seeing if anyone would agree with him and his dire need for food before he continued to answer me. "An hour ago," he finally said. 

"Exactly."

He was stunned at my response. As a person who looks like I cannot leave the vicinity of food, he could not believe that I was actually disagreeing with him. 

The fact is that at any given time, there is a person without food. At any given time there is a person without water, a person without a home, shelter, fresh drinking water, a person without an education, a person without access to any of the western civilisation's many privilages, yet people like this man sit in capitalist organisations which work to ensure our future exploitation and complain about things he has too much of. There sits a vending machine right outside our classroom and a massive cafeteria fifteen steps down the corridor. Alas, this man feels the need to complain senselessly about his so-called 'starvation'. I want to see this man experience the lives of those in third world countries, to walk in their lack of shoes, to leave his Prada glasses so that he could possibly look through the lens of poverty, so that maybe by some miracle he can appreciate what he has. 

He honestly angered me so. And unfortunately there are a lot of people out there like this 'starving' university student who had to endure a painstaking hike from the carpark to the classroom in the boiling heat without a drop of water or a bite of food. Heaven forbid if he has to walk two minutes to a filtered drinking fountain behind our classroom. Shame on you. 

Mother's Day

As per usual, today was another excuse for my family to gather together and share within ourselves ten large pizzas, how we ended up fitting them all inside of us  I still cannot recall. All in the name of Mother's Day, we headed out onto the freeway and placed the phone order as we drove.

And as per usual, something shook me today. One bridge in the freeway overlooks a large memorial garden, where tombstones lay in commemoration of some we have lost. Not my family though, not yet. But what struck me was looking at hordes of family members wearing black, stopping at tombstones and placing large bouquets of flowers. Little people who the idea of death is still abstract to, big people who know it too well and older people who are expecting it at any moment gathered on a piece of land underneath the freeway as we passed, unappreciative of just how good it is to be alive with people and eating a lot of fresh warm pizza.

And the fact is that I do not live my life to its fullest potential. I still sit here in my little 'everything will be okay every time' bubble and thrive in it when in reality everything is not okay. I need to push myself away from thinking critically about partaking in any activity that will prolong my stay here and push myself away from the abstract thing that is death so that I may live until my time comes. Today reminded me of that. I have my mother, my sister, my entire family, and I still choose the glow of the computer screen over them. I still choose watching videos and looking at pictures of people doing things rather than doing things myself.

I think most people are like that nowadays, though. People have become too afraid to take risks because they feel it is better to observe them being done by somebody else to avoid the pain that may come with the flip-side of that risk. There was a time when I was eighteen that I took so many risks, when I look back at them now I think of the person I was as a totally different character, someone so foreign to me. But that was when I was happier. I had a sort of freedom in anything that I did, but I had to stop it all because it was eating away at me as well, the fastness of it all, the scum that I met along the way, and capitalism knocking on my little door telling me that its rent was due.

So I have turned away from risk to acquire a different form of reward, a reward given to my mind and my pocket. I still need to reward my body, though, and that will come with the rewarding of my mentality. I keep reminiscing to that scene today. Everything can fall away so quickly. It can slip away so fast, the strongest of arms cannot hold on, this entire facade we call 'life' will not be lenient when it wants to leave us, no matter the impact we make. It was not lenient towards Abraham Lincoln. It was not lenient towards Mother Theresa. It was not lenient towards Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse, nobody. It does not accept any deals. It does not offer mercy to those who have offered it their entire lives. It does not respect any legacies or any endeavours. It wants your soul and there is nothing to do about it but enjoy it while you can.

The reason why I cringe when I think of a career is because you are paid for your time - time can never be bought back. Yes, work at McDonalds for three years as a manager, get paid thousands, that is fantastic - but all you did was swap three years of living for three years worth of money, a mere thing that the government has crafted in order for us to swap things. Even if you are not residing in a third world country, even if you are rather powerful, you are being exploited, and the exploiter is mankind.

Appreciate all that you have right this very moment. Stop all sources of exploitation and sit and listen to yourself breathe for a bit. You exist. You are temporary. So is your mother. Or your sister. Or your aunty. Or your grandma. Or yourself, if you are a female. Or any male. Everyone. Happy Mother's Day. Happy Another Day Day. Go. Live.

Running Taps

There exists nothing in this world as irritating than that of a tap which drip, drip, drips its way into the nighttime, each drip like a poke at your sides. And thankfully for me, in my family, it appears as though each member has a weak wrist when it comes to closing a tap correctly, despite the fact that they all have very strong grips.

And in juxtaposition to this lack of strength in the closing of sink taps, my family members seal tight the shower taps. Each time I go shower after another member, I have to wrestle a handle so as to bring forth the warmness of the hot water to stop my shivering. And it baffles me, it baffles me so, that someone can tighten the shower's handle so tight that it cannot be unscrewed, like the inability to remove the sword from the stone, I find myself sometimes unable to turn the shower taps on - perhaps next time I shall consult Arthur to assist me. He had his luck with the sword, maybe he can try his luck with my shower handles.

Yet the sink taps remain drip, drip dripping. One is dripping away as I type, but I have sent my mother over to diagnose the solution. I simply cannot stand listening to droplets of water smacking themselves against the bottom of the sink then hurrying down the drain. When I turn the tap on, water is not as loud as those droplets which seem to slip out of the faucet. Sometimes, actually all of the time, the droplets dripping annoy me, however when I think about closing the tap tighter to put an end to their freedom, I feel as though I am a strict politician.

Should these droplets deserve their freedom? Do they deserve rights? Perhaps each member of my family allows these droplets their rights and I am an evil dictator against the freedom of these translucent beings. Why do I deny them their liberty? Am I being selfish by taking into account my level of annoyance rather than their level of oppression? They work so hard to rush out the way they do, over my toothbrush, over my hands that I wipe my rear-end with, over my grotty fingers, yet I take them for granted. 

Even though I now feel sorry for these droplets, I still believe in their oppression until I believe it is time for them to be released. Bouncing out of the faucet at four in the morning, bouncing their bodily noises all the way into my bedroom and bouncing me away from sleep is simply unacceptable. They may have their freedom when I have grime to rid myself of. They may have their freedom when I have emptied my bowels. They may have their freedom when my face is burning with the effects of humidity. But they may most definitely not have their freedom when I am trying to beg my insomnia to dissipate. 

It is as though the tap's drip drip dripping is music to my insomnia's ears. It dances to the beat of those droplets, and by continuing to fall, the droplets are forcing my insomnia to join them for an eternal waltz. This romantic inconvenience should play no part in a household whose inhabitants struggle to keep up with the fast motion of capitalism and all capitalistic requirements, which include sleeping at early hours to wake up at early hours. Perhaps water droplets are a government initiative sent out in order to test who really cares for capitalism and who does not. 

Join me in my fight to end the war between weak wrists and water droplets. Strengthen the wrists of your family members by enforcing them to close the taps the way they close the shower taps. 'We want you', tell them, 'we want you to join us in the oppression of water droplets'. Do not let capitalism test you.

Working Nine to Five Just to Stay Alive

Perhaps that is the most true lyric in Beyonce's new album. It applies to capitalistic life, to the notions which dominate our lifestyles and the ways in which we go about our days.

If we do not collectively waste away ourselves for the betting of our economy, then we are overlooked. Other than in a dating situation, we all are like fish in the sea. And there are plenty of us. Except, we are like a school of fish. It not rare for a fish to fall behind and hide in an anemone, away from the school, yet that fish will not survive to their potential on their own, or at least they assume so. If one does not follow the capitalist way in a capitalist state, they are expected to fall behind, and that they will in contrast of the possibilities. If you think about it, working nine to five is not the worst case scenario in someone's life. A worst case scenario would be that of working nine pm to five am, at a gentleman's club, as a woman.

It is one thing to walk in high heels for long hours, the feeling of which I will never know but that I always will know about, and it is another to have to wear them as you are performing an activity over a long period of time. That is not all strippers wear, though. Although they wear the least amount of clothing, they wear a burden on their face which is heavier than most burdens carried. This may not be the case, as this piece is heavily based on general assumptions but one finds it difficult to think otherwise and the grounds on which I base these assumptions are realistic enough to be believable.

I will not delve into this case any deeper than I already have because I am aware that people have to do various things to survive, and that is where my argument turns towards, the things some people do in order to continue flowing through a capitalist economy. Had there been no strippers, there would be less lawyers having to separate women from desperate men or vice versa seeing as heterosexuality is no longer the only accepted form of sexual desire, and alcohol sales which work to reduce the attendee's nerves would plummet.

That is not to say that I condone the availability of strippers, nor that I condone what all non-monogamous people crave - it is to say that working nine to five is detrimental to one in all cases. Working for hours longer than nine to five generally ensures that once the worker is finished, they are finished for the day. Nine to five jobs, on the other hand, have the tendency to be time consuming after they are allegedly over for the day. Take teaching, for example. I am only a teacher in training and now I never get headspace.

Teaching is rewarding though. I suppose then I shall conclude with if the nine to five job is honestly worth it, and worthy of the hours spent before and after those hours, not taking into account the pay, then I am happy to have to stay alive in that manner.

Nanna Naps

There is an extreme lack of control, an inability to maintain any sense of control or any chance of regaining control once a young adult is lounged on a comfortable leather sofa after a long, tiring day, for once one does so, they fall into a peace that no monster can destroy.

'Nanna Nap', the fault in every young person where if they work a little too hard in their day, they will fall asleep at a spontaneous morning before the dark evening sets in, a powerful sleep wherein they nod off, wake up, and nod off again, continuing the cycle until they fall into the mental realm of all elderly, the point of no return, the inverted peak of inactivity. No young person is safe from this, it is a fault in their wiring because they are wired to initially explore and experience, not conform and comply - when they do end up conforming and complying, they tire themselves to an extent where they fall into a mental state that is inevitable to all those wrinkly occupants at nursing homes.

Young adults who are affected by these Nanna Naps usually are tertiary students who cannot afford to be anything but productive. These naps eliminate the possibility of productivity, and when waken, these  victimised young adults are faced with the daunting possibility of momentarily forgetting the time, day, month, or year that it is. Be it that these Nanna Naps are short, but they are long enough to destroy the young adult's sense of time, their sense of spatial cognition, and their hopes and dreams. These futile naps can destroy every potential of a future, whilst masking themselves with needs, wants and desires. Soon enough, at one point in their difficult day, the young adult would need some sleep, they would want to nap, and have the desire of rest, and the only thing that can give them all three is the Nanna Nap.

Nanna Naps have illusory benefits, in fact they mostly have no benefits at all. At the time they are initiated, young adults fall into the myth that they need it, that it will help them in getting through the rest of the day, when the truth is that the Nanna Nap cunningly steals away the rest of the young adult's day, and abolishes their ability to fall asleep later that evening, when insomnia crawls in and takes over. The young adult then finds themselves in a situation where they cannot prepare their bodies for the demands of the following day, and struggle throughout it when they finally wake after their alarms ring thirteen or fifteen times. They drag their bodies in a lifeless manner, involuntarily duplicating the movements of the walking dead, and have to rely on energy drinks or caffeine or both to keep their eyelids from caving in for the rest of the day, until, of course, they find the urge to, once home, partake in a Nanna Nap again.

Victims of both the vicious cycle and of capitalism, young adults have no means of escaping their daily fates. They must commence their lives, napping at strange hours and waking up years, or so it seems, later. Though they have no sense of control of Nanna Naps, Nanna Naps, as cunning as they seem, actually exist for the welfare of the young adult's mentality. They briefly calm the young adult so that they do not derail themselves from the track of life, and offer them a period of repose, wherein there is no essay nor exam nor experience awaiting to trouble them, where a fleeting utopia calms them, and provides them with the opportunity to release their thoughts. 

We all require Nanna Naps, as devious as they sometimes are. They are the student's guardian angels, the student's alternative to a getaway, and a student's nightmare. They are both beneficial and detrimental, but there is no escaping them. Nobody can escape a Nanna Nap.