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hawkwing_lbToday, much like yesterday, was not a day of doing useful things. It was a day for curling up and lashing out and wanting many things I do not have - like a job, for example - or cannot have, like the season 2 boxset of Battlestar Galactica, or season 1 of Farscape - which has been recommended to me now more than twice, from separate sources - or the many, many books I want to read.
Today was a day of wanting. I dislike wanting: it feels too much like greed, when the list of things I am fortunate to have stretches to infinity. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing I can turn off on cue. Contentment has never been the easiest state of mind for me to achieve.
I'd like to be wealthy. It would make things so much easier. But what is wealth, really? On any absolute scale, I'm already on the rich end. I have access - free and regular - to potable water, I have at least one meat meal daily, a new pair of decent shoes at least once a year*, access to university education under the free fees initiative, free (if haphazard) healthcare, and a family who (whatever they might think of me) are unlikely to ever let me starve or sleep in the street. (Though I do spend more than I can afford on books. Wanting more than one a week is an unreasonable vice. Even one a fortnight seems to be an excess of profligacy, lately. But I'm an addict, and the library is insufficient to my desire.)
On any absolute scale, that's wealth, right there. But relative to my society?
It's not poverty.** Nor is it, on the other hand, quite comfortably middle class.
My impression of the comfortably bourgeois section of society is that it is shrinking, and as part of that shrinkage, many of the (formerly) comfortably middle class are entering that nebulous socioeconomic bracket, 'lower' middle class, and many of those who formerly laid claim to that position are joining the struggling middle class. You know, the ones who would never dream of calling themselves poor, but dread the week at the end of the month when the last paycheck has worn thin and they're living on the overdraft, and live in horror of the unexpected expense.
The wealthy (and I include among these the unmortgaged-to-the-hilt owners of more than one sizeable property and the discreetly wealthy with hundred-thousand-euro-plus annual incomes, as well as the more obvious million- and billionaires), however; the wealthy seem only to get wealthier.
And I wonder whether my perception of the squeezage of the middle class is a true thing, or a new thing, or an inevitable thing, or all three combined.
----
A hedgehog has been visiting our back garden. I caught him (her?) tonight eating chopped egg from the cat's bowl, small and brown and spiky. He (or she) turned and ran when the light fell on him (or her). Now we shall have to leave out teabags, and other folkloric hedgehog foods.
The world changes. The world stays the same.
Herr Hedgehog came back later, but refused to pose for the (mobile phone) camera. He (or she) will never make a model.
-----
And from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katallen:
If there are one or more people on your friends-list who make the world a better place just because they exist and whom you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this sentence in your journal.
Well, there are.
*Once a year rather than more frequently because a) I hate shopping, and b) as a result of this, I try to pick shoes that last. :)
**The fact that poverty has nearly as much shame and stigma attached to it as mental illness, and for, as far as I can see, much the same reasons, is a topic for another day.
Today was a day of wanting. I dislike wanting: it feels too much like greed, when the list of things I am fortunate to have stretches to infinity. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing I can turn off on cue. Contentment has never been the easiest state of mind for me to achieve.
I'd like to be wealthy. It would make things so much easier. But what is wealth, really? On any absolute scale, I'm already on the rich end. I have access - free and regular - to potable water, I have at least one meat meal daily, a new pair of decent shoes at least once a year*, access to university education under the free fees initiative, free (if haphazard) healthcare, and a family who (whatever they might think of me) are unlikely to ever let me starve or sleep in the street. (Though I do spend more than I can afford on books. Wanting more than one a week is an unreasonable vice. Even one a fortnight seems to be an excess of profligacy, lately. But I'm an addict, and the library is insufficient to my desire.)
On any absolute scale, that's wealth, right there. But relative to my society?
It's not poverty.** Nor is it, on the other hand, quite comfortably middle class.
My impression of the comfortably bourgeois section of society is that it is shrinking, and as part of that shrinkage, many of the (formerly) comfortably middle class are entering that nebulous socioeconomic bracket, 'lower' middle class, and many of those who formerly laid claim to that position are joining the struggling middle class. You know, the ones who would never dream of calling themselves poor, but dread the week at the end of the month when the last paycheck has worn thin and they're living on the overdraft, and live in horror of the unexpected expense.
The wealthy (and I include among these the unmortgaged-to-the-hilt owners of more than one sizeable property and the discreetly wealthy with hundred-thousand-euro-plus annual incomes, as well as the more obvious million- and billionaires), however; the wealthy seem only to get wealthier.
And I wonder whether my perception of the squeezage of the middle class is a true thing, or a new thing, or an inevitable thing, or all three combined.
----
A hedgehog has been visiting our back garden. I caught him (her?) tonight eating chopped egg from the cat's bowl, small and brown and spiky. He (or she) turned and ran when the light fell on him (or her). Now we shall have to leave out teabags, and other folkloric hedgehog foods.
The world changes. The world stays the same.
Herr Hedgehog came back later, but refused to pose for the (mobile phone) camera. He (or she) will never make a model.
-----
And from
katallen:If there are one or more people on your friends-list who make the world a better place just because they exist and whom you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this sentence in your journal.
Well, there are.
*Once a year rather than more frequently because a) I hate shopping, and b) as a result of this, I try to pick shoes that last. :)
**The fact that poverty has nearly as much shame and stigma attached to it as mental illness, and for, as far as I can see, much the same reasons, is a topic for another day.
