You Are Here

I'll never forget the day I first went to the bus stop just down the road from where I lived with my brother Andy and family in Victoria. Langford to be exact. I was waiting to take the bus to a shift at my new job as a security guard working the 7 PM to 7 AM shift guarding two office buildings and the Save On Foods strip mall. I didn't have the usual experience with vagrancy or poverty-induced crime that one might expect as a bus station story. There was a map of Langford bus routes at this particular bus stop. On the map was a circled star marked, "You are here." On the sidewalk just outside the busdriver shack there was a corresponding circled star marked, "You are here." I saw the pavement circled star before the map circled star and it blew my mind!

"You are here." I remember at first standing there staring at the circled star at my feet and thinking something pretentious to myself, (how bad a person are you if you are self-pretentious?), like, "How existential!" Oh ho ho ho. "Pretentious? Moi?" I chuckled aloud at my rapist wit. (a little Dumb and Dumber to lower the brow of the humour)

But then, as I am wont to do at the beginning of what I am positive will be a long, long night guarding empty buildings and walking empty streets and parking lots, I pulled the starter chord on the old neurons and started hammering this thought around in my head like it was a raquetball... ball... and my skull was a court. "I AM HERE!" (Italics mine) "I'm not anywhere else as far as I know. I'm here. Now. Right here. Right now. And right now you should listen to Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo." Actually in the video, (for Van Hagar's "Right Now"), it says, "Right now you should pay attention to the lyrics." And the lyrics that followed, if I may, were, "Miss a beat, you lose the rhythm. And nothing falls into place. Only missed by a fraction. Slipped a little off your pace. The more things you get, the more you want. Just trade in one for another. Workin' so hard to make it easy. EASY! Woah! Got to turn, come on, turn this thing around right now! Hey, it's your tomorrow. Right now. Come on, it's everything. Right now. Catch that magic moment. Do it right here and now. It means everything."

Yeah! Inspiring! It DOES mean everything! "Why am I working this job I hate, for people I hate and sometimes WITH people I hate?" I thought. "Is THIS my tomorrow? I'm workin' hard but I'm getting 120 bucks for this shift while my boss is getting 5 grand! No matter how hard I work for a prick like that it won't get easy. It'll never get easy. In fact as the cost of living goes up and my salary doesn't, it's just going to get harder." And I was pretty sure being right there, right then I was not going to be catching any magic moments. It was not my tomorrow. I had missed a beat and lost the rhythm. So I turned that thing around and got outta there. Eventually I ended up in Indonesia. I really loved teaching English in Korea but I found myself shooting for a goal that was monetary there. I was making my fortune and not my future. I was pretty sure there were no fortunes to be made in Indonesia and sitting here with about 50 bucks to my name I can honestly say I'm back in the rhythm. Hoping things fall into place.

I also trust that writing will figure largely in my tomorrow. It's my real vocation. Teaching English just pays the bills. JUST pays the bills. This is my work on this earth. It certainly won't strap me with the burden of becoming acquisitive and wanting more and more stuff, replacing one thing with another! I just moved a couple weeks ago. In a taxi! One trip!

So the other day I had a sort of deja vu. I was standing on the streets of Jakarta looking down at my feet as though there were a circled star at them. There wasn't, but where I was and what I was doing right there and then got the old neurons firing. I was waiting to cross the street on the way home from teaching my two seven-year-olds Ah In and Joon Ah. They're so cute! Anyway, there was slow moving traffic stopping me from crossing but I noticed that it did nothing to dissuade the locals from crossing. They just threw up their hands in a combination sorry/thank you wave if the driver stopped, and head protection if the driver did not stop. I was determined to test a theory. Ghandi-like, I waited and waited receiving one odd look after another from the people who had taken their lives in their hands and crossed in front of me. I knew what those looks meant. They were aspectually, (is that a word?), informing me that I should just do what they had done because nobody was going to stop and wave me across. But I have high aspirations for the people of Indonesia. Some of the people of Indonesia might say they're too high, but I remained undaunted. I was determined to give some motorist the uplifting feeling of proffering kindness onto another raising his status from stranger to brother. I've been saying for blogs and blogs that we should all at least try to act more like brothers and less like competitors in this human race. I'll repeat: "Proffering kindness onto another raises his status from stranger to brother." What a wonderful world this would be if we all kept this in mind, no?

I waited and waited...

What does it say about yourself and your culture if you don't expect kindness from other people? Because you expect them to be too selfish to stop and let you cross the street, then catch up to traffic in a few seconds, essentially losing NO time at all on their trip but saving you some time on yours, you actually repay their selfishness with some of your own by jumping in front of them and forcing them to stop for you? Is this what the old pioneers and explorers termed, "unrefined," "uncivilized," even, "savage" behaviour in the people of newly visited lands?

What do we mean when we talk about "civilized" society? Are we talking about refined, well-mannered, well-educated, elegant, erudite, polished, urbane, sophisticated, intrepid, suave, debonair David Nivens or Catherine Hepburns? Or is it something else? Well ask yourself this: would David or Catherine ever jump out into traffic in order to cross a street or elbow their way to the front of a line-up? I submit to you that finishing school and proper breeding notwithstanding, pretty much anybody would do either under the right, (or more to the point, WRONG), circumstances. Would Catherine or David ever blow a fart in public? You fill them up with Indian food and trap them in an elevator I could see either of them lighting up a cigarette, (in a long holder of course), and saying, "I appologize profusely and preemptively for what I am about to do," before gracefully currifying the elevator air. Afterwards there might ensue a truly enlightening discourse on gastro-intestinal functions and their necessity to personal health and well being.

I waited some more...

I'd say it comes down to something as Harper-supporter simple as the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. There are variations of this in every culture and country. It's not a secret. Why then is practically the whole world pretending that the golden rule is "He who has the gold makes the rules?" Why are we working harder and harder for less and less? Isn't this exactly what our forefathers and foremothers worked and fought so hard to insure us against? The people I'm talking about ACTUALLY fought. In wars. Were they fighting for some abstract concept like freedom, justice, or the other crap we're told to think? No. They wanted their kids to have it easy. They figured that by now we'd have so much wealth that we'd all have VERY nice houses, several cars, swimming pools and such and all on the income of a single breadwinner working a 10 hour week. They were dead wrong! Weren't they? Well it turns out they were right on the money. There IS enough for us all to have the good life they worked and fought and died for. In America there's enough for every man woman and child to get over 200,000 a year. Imagine how much that's gonna be if there's only one breadwinner per family!

So what happened? Who highjacked the dreams of our forefathers and foremothers? I want to know why when I live in Canada, for which my ancestors worked and fought many years, why I have to work 7 PM to 7 AM for minimum wage. I'm educated. I'm a good worker. I'm smart. I want to know why I don't have the good life my ancestors earned for me. I want to know why the hell I don't have a swimming pool!!!

I continued waiting as the cars and motorbikes slowly passed.

I thought of Canada. In my country you can stand on a street and expect a motorist to kindly wave you across the street in front of them. In fact I think it's practically a law. At least it's understood and widespread driving etiquette in Canada to do this. Canadians must be a genteel and superior people!

After many years in Asia going back to Canada for a couple years, THIS was one of the hardest things for me to get used to. I would be walking and I'd have a road crossing carefully timed. Right after this car passes in front of me I'll have an opening and I'll make it easily. Then the car slows down and stops completely closing the opening and making other motorists stop on your account unnecesarily. And admit it, Canadian motorists, it may not be the human decency in your soul but actually the rule or the law that makes you stop and wave me across. And while I'm walking you may not say so but I can sense you thinking, "Come on, move it slowpoke! Knees and elbows! Get the lead out, I didn't stop so you could sashay across the street like you're on a catwalk. Yeah I'll wave back to you. You're welcome. You're welcome to hurry the hell up!"

But having said that, I still think it's a positive thing. Even though Canadians mostly do acts of kindness and gentility through force of law or convention, at least we're doing them. And before long we get used to doing them. And isn't that nice for everyone? I don't know how often I really took notice of the manners and courtesy, fake or genuine, that we have the luxury of practicing in Canada. I know they were more appreciated after many years in Asia. But this is not to say I believe Canadians are superior folk, (though I might hee hee), I believe it has a lot to do with one factor that Canada has going for it that most Asian nations don't: proper population density. I don't care what Apu Nehasapimapetilon thinks, ("I've noticed that America is dangerously underpopulated!"), Asian people need to put on a condom once in a while! TOO MANY PEOPLE! And one of the seemingly unavoidable biproducts of overpopulation is the rude, selfish, screw-everybody-but-me driving and walking styles. Is it self-preservation or are people just too lazy to practice common courtesy? Just look at the Chinese!

Oh, and by the way, Canada, take advantage of the common courtesy we have in our country now because discourteous walking, driving, (and other things), styles of other countries are some of the things we get with the massive immigration policies in Canada. What do you think will happen, Canadians will influence newcomers to walk and drive politely or Canadians will be influenced by newcomers to walk and drive like selfish madmen? I wonder if this Thai lady didn't eventually shove her way through to get her refund...

I waited some more. Then I waited some more...

I was at the Lotte Mart yesterday. Right in the mall where I live. It's SO convenient! I don't even have to go outside to get groceries! I went to get butter. That's all. Just butter. It's a far cry from what shopping was before I moved here! I'd make sure the cupboards were empty before shopping. Now I just go for a pound of butter. Half pound even!

So anyway, I see a check out counter with a pretty short line-up and start walking towards it. As I am doing so, a lady in the line-up for the check out counter right beside mine notices the short line. Then she notices me. I don't know if this Indonesian lady had ever played football in her life, probably not, but she was like a running back who saw a hole and she made straight for it like Tony Dorsett. I believe if I had not slowed my pace as she cut in front of me I would have receive a Walter Peyton stiff-arm too! So now I have to grumble under my breath and act like she hasn't committed an etiquette attrocity against my person, and she has to stand in front of me and pretend like she STILL doesn't know I exist. It could have gone differently. We could have met half way to the check out counter and one of us could have acted in a distinguished and unselfish manner offering the spot to the other. Then we could have engaged in conversation. We could have discovered that we both live in Gandaria Heights. Maybe we would have chatted about the facilities and our conversation may have come around to the gym. She would have mentioned that she works out and I would have mentioned tha I do too. We could have become exercise buddies, and, who knows, possibly long-time friends. One simple act of decorum is all that it required.

I was starting to get a little impatient, but waited some more...

I got to wondering how often social connections are sacrificed in modern society on the hollow altar of survival of the fittest. I thought of all the energy expended on the ratrace that we believe is just a sad fact of life but which is just a hamster wheel our owners have put into our cages so they can have the pleasure of watching us waste our time and energy while they get rich. Life doesn't have to be like this. We could have kindness, courtesy, brotherhood, genuine friendships with our neighbours and we could have to leisure time as well as the money to nourish those friendships. All we need to do is expend a fraction of the energy we use now eking out our livings, and put it into some national and international money and resource equitable re-dispersal. It would only take a few really determined and patient people to start a movement such as this. Funneling all the money to the very few people, the super rich, at the top of the capitalism ladder has made this world more stressful, selfish and UNcivilized. We do not behave as gentlemen and gentlewomen to each other as our ancestors wanted. We have progressed backward into a state of perpetual competition with even close friends. Our behaviour to each other is sickening, and it only feeds the very few at the top. Who are the people who will start the revolution we so desperately need? Who will civilize an uncivil civilization?

I jumped out in front of a car flailing my arms and forcing it to stop while saying aloud, "Bunch of savages," and I continued on my way home.