Every One Must Live With Dignity
Dear friend,
My glasses broke in my coat pocket. They were close to the end anyways and I don’t feel sad about it, but it bothers me a little. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, the inconvenience of having to wear them and our relationship has been strained from the get go.
From the beginning I regretted the blue coating that was supposed to make them kinder for computer work. It made the world look just a little bit colder. Friends said they lent a certain gravitas, like wearing glasses makes you look like you know something you don’t.
I’m just not a fan.
Maybe a rose tint for the next pair?
I’d fallen asleep on the flight from Budapest to Turin and when I woke one of the arms had sheered off. It was metal fatigue that did for them in the end.
I’d dropped them running for a train one time in London and a woman apologised to me with a look of horror on her face.
At the time I wondered if maybe she was sensitive to fallen specs, but I quickly realised she’d trod on them.
In my experience, the first time you have to bend eyewear back into shape, it’s the beginning of the end.
The one’s I’m using now are reading glasses I got online. They hurt after a while.
Such sensitive things eyes.
We’re in a beautiful old apartment in Turin, staying over night with a friend before visiting Chiara’s parents. The apartment is opposite the main train station and you can hear a symphony of engines and car horns outside, but it’s peaceful in here.
There’s a “Withnail and I” vibe in the living room. A clouded gilded mirror and high, eggshell blue corniced ceilings.
In the centre of Turin the main piazza has been hijacked by a car show. Roads closed. Tannoys blasting out announcements. It’s cacophonous, but I can’t help liking cars. There’s an Astor from the early 20th century. While I’m admiring it a mature guy is talking with Chiara. At first I thought he was talking to himself but she told me how beautifully he spoke about the stupid ways western society is organised. He can’t draw his pension because the age limit keeps getting pushed back.
“Every one must live in dignity. Each should have what they need.” he’s saying and he’s right.
But the world is upside down. The one’s piling up more than they can use. The one’s manufacturing murder. Influencers of division and violence.
Where is their dignity?
They are stockpiling nothing. One day they will know it.
The kind and compassionate, the gentle, the humble. The meek truly inherit the earth.
It’s tempting to take cheap shots at powerful figures, but they are not powerful in reality and the shots don’t come cheap.
It costs you your peace to attack, even if it’s a thought that feels justified.
It’s not the moral high ground to be forgiving.
It’s of the earth.
Practical.
A practice, if peace is what we really want.
Dignified in the face of absurdity.
If we cannot forgive at least we can recognise futility when we see it.
And then maybe compassion flowers, even for the ones who promise destruction.
And we can act from compassion and say yes to unity. Be with one another.
A light shining through the darkness.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey