Life in a Day

I read the news today, oh boy. More holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

More holes than the finance available to fill them.

More disasters, more horror.

No money, no jobs.

No hope?

The world is not a pleasant place right now. Not for me, probably not for you either.

And yet I refuse to give up.

Persistent little idealist that I am.

I have to believe that something good is going to happen soon and people around the world will realise the error of their combined ways and do something about injustice once and for all.

As I said, I’m a dreamer.

I cannot live without hope of improvement and a vision of a world where people finally realise that they need to respect one another, be honest with one another and stop all the unnecessary fighting, both globally and within our own little insignificant lives.

People say that they feel edgy; standing on the edge of a precipice. There’s excitement, anticipation and trepidation, intermingling together, concerned yet intrigued about the unknown. The trouble is one doesn’t know which direction the fall is going to go; down into the depths of despair or walking on a solid pathway further up the mountain to see the real wonderment of the world – the ultimate truth.

Every day, people live with this, though some still cannot see that they are on a pathway.

Every day people wake in the world and walk or talk or sit or stand and live their lives oblivious or engrossed in the world around them.

Every day, people live and we know nothing of their lives. We cannot even envisage what it must be like to be in another person’s mind.

We are all such individuals and yet we are simultaneously connected by an invisible thread that binds us together, only we choose too often to dislocate this, keeping ourselves to ourselves, unable to see that the thread needs strengthening and uniting if we are going to make the changes to the world that ought to happen.

Loving kindness is what is needed in this world. Compassionate economics, thoughtful politics, concern for oneself and others that are so significant in one’s lives, empathy for those we don’t even know.

And still we disregard at the ultimate expense of ourselves and our wellbeing.

It’s strange one this. The ego is vital and essential. If one is to live life to the full one has to look after oneself. There is some merit in thinking about yourself before all others. You are the only person who knows what you want, what you need and compromise can take so much of yourself.

Yet, the most selfish of people are missing the absolute benefit of giving.

Those people who followed the Thatcher vision of containment, thinking about their needs above all others, are so naive. If only they could lift their heads and see that if they truly value themselves above all, if they really want a truly contented life then they can only achieve this through the relationship and interconnection with others – known and unknown; through giving, through caring, through lovingkindness.

But of course, this is just my opinion.

I think about the most selfish moments in my life, and what have they actually given me? Yes, moments of brilliance in being free to do exactly what I want but ultimately, do they really provide the complete state of serenity that I want and need? Does selfishness really give me the same feeling of wholeness that I have when I am doing something for others?

I like giving. I selfishly like the feeling I have when a recipient values the things that I have done.

So perhaps I am no better than those whose aim is me, me, me.

In giving, I find me. I find myself.

Can we really live in a vacuum, oblivious to the lives and needs of others? Can we shut ourselves away and shield ourselves from the suffering of others? Can we switch the television off as soon as we see suffering and bloodshed? Can we ignore the plight of the many for the whims of the few?

Can we keep still and tunnel our minds without ever looking out and seeing the darkness in our world?

Can we keep still and tunnel our minds without ever looking out and seeing the lightness in our world either?

There’s a crack in everything – that’s where the light gets in.

If we are ever going to move on in life, we need to look and consider and empathise and wonder, and we simply do not do enough of this.

We walk away from the lives of others. We do not want to be witnessing things that we cannot cope with nor do anything about, and yet they are still happening.

Things unspoken don’t disappear. Feelings unmet do not vanish. Hurt remains.

And all we can do is turn away in the hope that they will diminish with time or a lottery win will take the pain away. We will give time and money and consideration as soon as we have more for ourselves. But do we actually do this when we do find ourselves with surplus to our need?

Last night, I watched a remarkable film about people throughout the world on a set day in 2010.

“Life in a Day” was an amalgamation of YouTube clips that had been carefully selected by an editing committee from the thousands sent in from around the world.

http://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday

They film looked at what was happening in peoples’ lives on a typical day in a year, in a lifetime, in our world.

The director Kevin Macdonald says that the film focuses on a single day because “a day is the temporal building block of human life – wherever you are”.

Us humans like sets. We like patterns and order. It makes us feel comfortable. Night follows day and so the pattern goes on, and whilst we live in this ordered chronology we are comforted by its sameness. So perhaps we don’t attempt to widen our sphere and look towards the lives of others.

We contain. We keep in our box. We live in our self-designed box after all.

But sometimes, we allow ourselves a glimpse at the outside world, to places that we are never likely to venture, into the lives of people that we are never likely to meet.

This film allows us to be voyeurs because that is what we are. We may think we want to be alone and isolated with just a few people around us as part of our lives but we are communicative animals by instinct. We want to see. We want to look and we want to think about what we have seen.

We want to touch and be touched by the lives of others.

If only we can be bothered to look, we can learn so much and gain some insight into the whole spectre of human potential.

The film looked at birth, at death, at suffering, at honesty, at amazement, at friends playing together, at peoples’ hopes. It said nothing and said everything. There was the unusual and the normal. There were lives lead with huge tragedies and complete chaos. There were lives lead where there were seemingly no real worries. There were people absorbing the wonderment of the world and there were others steeped in religious doctrines and rituals, unable to break free.

There were children learning and adults instructing. There was joy in the simplest of creations and bewilderment at the magnitude of the immense.

There, in this film, was life and yet.........

......... I wonder.

I wonder how many people watched this film and felt.

I wonder how many people watched this film and thought.

I wonder how many people watched this film and imagined.

Because in order to live fully, these three things are what we should be doing, and we should be mindful of when we are doing them and what affect it has upon us and upon others.

How many people felt a spirituality in watching? How many people could even begin to explain what this feeling was? Did it need explaining?

How many people live their daily lives with spiritual intelligence in mind?

How many people watched this film and thought that there is a glimmer of hope in this hopeless world of ours? There may be no money to fill those holes in Blackburn but is that really the most important thing in our lives?

I watched and was fascinated. I’m probably a bit of an anthropologist at heart. I am certainly a voyeur by choice. I like people and humankind, even if many of them are fuckwits.

Yes, I did feel a spiritual wellbeing in looking at the lives of others. I felt uplifted and enlightened.

Some of it was a little tedious and there were times when I wanted to turn away but in the main, it was a good film to consider and think and imagine and feel.

So what was I doing on 24^th July 2010? What would I have been able to contribute had I had my wits about me? Was I thinking, feeling, imagining on that day? Was I using my head and hand and hearts?

I woke early. I drove to the beach; a strange place at the end of a dilapidated council estate.

The sun was urging its way through the clouds. I stepped onto the sand and looked at the strange vista in front of me; open sea brushing its way towards me, a natural beauty smothered by industrial necessity. To my right was a city emerging from the mellow hills, sitting alongside a harbour, waiting to spring to life. To my left was a vast steelworks, billowing out white clouds and transparent gases that may or may not have been invading my lungs.

I was alone, despite the two beach cleaners operating some large and monstrous yellow machine that was whipping up the collected flotsam and jetsam.

I was alone and contented whilst missing loved ones.

I sat down in a cafe on another beach, eating breakfast with my children.

I sat on a beach reflecting, writing, thinking, wondering.

I sat in a chair emailing, loving, wishing.

Saturday 24^th July 2010, I was happy. I was loved. I was giving and I received so very much.

How many people in that film can say the same? And what would they say now? Were they in the same place on Sunday 24^th July 2011? Are they and I as loved? How had their lives been changed and shaped during the succession from one day to the other? How was the wider world coping? Was there any further progress towards that eradication of injustice that I hold so passionately?

And what of 24^th July 2012 and years after that?

I read the news today, oh boy.

It’s not good.

Greece is in turmoil with indecision and that ever-obvious procrastination of the depressed. There is worldwide symbolic demonstration about the inequity of life. There is global monopoly to protect the monied. There are selfish governments thinking only of themselves and their retention of power.

There’s wars in abundance – to the point that they rarely get mentioned these days. There is a bubble of angst bursting forth in Syria. Have we forgotten this country because their leaders are not as well known as the Gaddafi’s?

There’s a pathetic inability of our leaders to act intelligently to make this world of ours a better place.

But there’s also hope. The people in that film live their lives in all manner of impoverishment. As do so many of us.

But we still go on and we resolutely refuse to give up on the idea that crack of light will eventually become a pool of utter brilliance and the ultimate truth of human kindness will prevail.

As I said, I am a dreamer.