Help me, I don’t understand.

 

Help me, I don’t understand.

My son, my youngest child, came to visit after a long COVID break. He feels that the world is not fair to him, since the employers pressured him to get vaccinated and the government restricted his mobility. He is also a smoker, but restrictions on smoking don’t bother him.

As we sit after years of separation, we compare notes. He tells me the opinions of the oil workers from the north. They live on oil exports and the sale of Canada’s forests. He complains about the lack of job security, unpaid overtime, and scarcity of housing. In his book, there is one reason why he and his co-workers are suffering, mainly named Trudeau. Trudeau didn’t have vaccines when other countries did and later was responsible for employers forcing workers to get vaccinated. Trudeau caused inflation and supply chain problems and lineups in airports when pilots were sick and planes didn’t fly. Trudeau caused a rebellion in Ottawa by not meeting with people who blocked the city and caused a slowdown of the economy. He knew they demanded that he and the government will resign. My son thinks I support Trudeau regardless of my denial. I support anyone who makes life better for the average people like me and objects to the abuse of common people. To some, this is socialism.

A better life for me is impossible without considering the well-being of the planet, inequality amongst people, and spiritual health. Civilization will not survive unless we take care of our home, our planet, our family, all the other humans, and understand that there is a universal mind greater than our billions of scattered minds competing for self-importance. He disagrees. We must get rid of Trudeau. Sadly, we just had an election.

The temperature dropped, and it got darker outside. I am no longer used to visitors aside from a few on Zoom. Sitting with my son and listening to a litany of complaints stresses me out, but we need to find a way back to normal if there still is a normal state. After three years of isolation, I am not sure I know what “Normal” is. I worked for over fifty years, live on a pension that I saved for, and my golden years are stressful. I can’t make sense of what is going on.

Dad, my dear son, starts again. In the old days, everything was easy. Now we, the young generation, are all screwed up. You, the old people, got everything. Wow, I am alarmed.

The people who survived the worst war were my generation. My parents suffered worse than my son can even imagine. My generation has been through hardships, the kind he has never seen. We worked, studied, invented, and got killed, demonstrating for human rights and social justice. We elected leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt who made prosperity for the masses possible and set the world up for a period of affluence. Now the young lament that they don’t instantly have the material goods that we painfully acquired over an entire lifetime. They think that the world owes them a living, air travel, and cheap homes.

I know what the problem is. With population increase and automation, people’s roles decreased. A shoe is no longer made by a shoemaker and so on. Governments provided jobs by increasing bureaucracies, and so did giant companies. The people got smaller roles and no longer have pride in what they do for a living. Most people no longer enjoy work or feel that they make a meaningful contribution.

We developed a new norm where people value leisure time more than work. TGIF was born and spread like wildfire. Even business owners began to complain about the time they must work and spend working time dreaming about other activities. Work now is just about making money, not accomplishing things. People talk about vacations more than about achievements at work. Countries moved into shortening work time. The young spend more time often pretending to study, and the old retire younger and younger. People want to spend more time on the beach in exotic places. Those who don’t are considered freaks. In France last week, they had huge strikes over the government trying to make retirement start at 64 instead of 62.

We must sit down and discuss where society is going. A person’s value is attached to their contribution to society. We should tie our happiness to what we do, not to how much we make or accumulate, or the size of our homes. What we do for society is more important than the power that we have over others.

None of us knows where we may end up in life or where we will be if a few things change. That is where spirituality comes in. Today I may be on top of the world, but a year from now, through no fault of my own, I may be handicapped, bankrupt, homeless, or in any other undesirable situation. That is when I will need the help of society. The time to set things up for that possible event is now when I can do so.

As far as my son is concerned, he should consider that he will get old and frail someday, and now is the time to try his best to plan for then. It will come.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.