Living the Blur

When I first became unemployed, I kept my routines together, getting up around the beginning of office hours, keeping in touch, chasing the leads, applying for jobs, making sure that nothing interfered with my job hunting.

Just over a year later, I find that while the job hunting remains constant, it is sublimated to the things that I can actually achieve to validate myself as something aside from an eat-sleep-idle engine that produces nothing, does nothing and sees less. I am always available for job opportunities and submit applications every day that I spend more than an hour in front of my computer (six days a week). But my attention to the time and the days has become numbed. There really is no differentiation between them unless I have an appointment of some kind. I thought that this was not a good thing, but have become reconciled to the fact that it is a symptom of my situation and not unusual for those in my position. So I keep odd hours and I write while I have a surplus of and the luxury of the one thing that the working man has not: time.

In my first year of unemployment, I have done much that I am pleased with, done a few things I am proud of and become increasingly disenchanted with the employment market and the debt assistance market. Recruitment companies have proven to be craven and self-seeking with the exception of two out of the hundred I deal with. Debt management and such like are laughable. The moment they discover I have no job (and thus offer them no chance for profit) their glowing offers of help vanish faster than my weekly stipend from the government. I have looked into part-time work but have been told that anything I earn will be deducted from that stipend. How does this help me? I am not living, this is existing.

But frighteningly, I now know without question that I can fall much further. The depths of destitution are nowhere near my hallowed state, no matter how far I am from where I was two years ago.

The long road down is not done with me yet, it seems.

But I will carry on. Despair is something I have for the course that society and the world is taking, not for my condition. My dreams, wishes and hopes are not denied me, they are not closed to me, they have not abandoned me. They are all possible and waiting for that moment when a convergence of timing, effort and luck make one or more of them attainable.

So onward.

 

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

– Oriah Mountain Dreamer

A quotation that I find so encompassing that I had a momentary conflict whether it should be in ‘Faith & Magic’ or ‘Love & Loss’ instead of ‘Quotes’. In the end, I gave up and put it in all three. Because it is all of those to me.

 

The Religious Man & The Unbeliever

A religious man met an unbeliever on the road from his place of worship.
The unbeliever said “Can you prove the existence of the powers you revere?”
The religious man said “No.”
The unbeliever smiled and said “But you still believe in those powers?”
The religious man smiled and said “Yes.”
The unbeliever braced himself and asked “Do you think I am a lesser man for having no god?”
The religious man said “No.”
The unbeliever paused and then asked “Shall we chat further over a beer?”
The religious man said “I’d rather have a coffee.”
The unbeliever said “Is that because the articles of your faith say you must not drink alcohol?”
The religious man laughed and said “No. It’s because I really don’t like the stuff and when I have forced myself to drink it in the past, I have behaved like a fool.”
The unbeliever nodded and said “I know that one. Lets get coffee.”
So the religious man and the unbeliever went for a drink and spent a fine afternoon discussing the things they had in common and learning of the world from each other’s veiwpoint.

I have faith. I do not need to defend it or to demean your views on it. Nor have I any need or right to question your faith unless you consider it right to inflict it upon others by force. In that case, we stand forever opposed.
Otherwise, let us treat each other as reasonable people and discern how we can work together to make a better future for us all.