Last night, we went and spent a few hours with our neighbors, who we haven't seen nearly all summer, since they have been renovating their summer cottage out in the Finnish archipelago. My wife has known them nearly all her life and are very close, which was one of the benefits of moving to this house - though we don't see them nearly as much as we would if they were my friends. Finns are less social than many cultures.
However, we were catching up with what we have been doing over the break and ended up talking about the various bubbles that we inhabit, as our "view of the world" is so limited. For instance, we were talking about the differences between suburbs in the city and the other wife was saying how bad one suburb is where she works - the same suburb I work in. But, her as a maternity nurse, sees a very different side of the suburb than I do, with my office located in a tech hub.
And then my wife was telling about our train ride back from the zoo last week, and how she realized then how far out of touch she has become in some aspects of life. With tickets on city train instead of an intercity train, there were a lot of drunks and probably a few on something stronger. Not the kinds of people we normally spend a few hours of our time with.
And we are not snobs by any stretch of the imagination, but wellbeing in Finland, like everywhere else in the world, has changed significantly in the last decade, with the wealth gaps spreading, so to the health gaps, education gaps, and culture gaps. While there is a lot of reasons to blame for the changes, at least partly, I ascribe a lot of it to our ability to pick and choose what we consume and what we believe so easily, without there being checks or balances on the quality of the information. But, it is also true that simultaneously, the economy is geared to do exactly this, divide and conquer masses through monopolization of resources.
Our nurse friend brough up how recently she had a student nurse training with her who was a far better nurse than our friend was at the same stage, yet constantly had to prove herself to customers and other colleagues, and any mistake she made was seen as evidence of incompetence, even though other student nurses make similar or worse, and it is brushed aside as training process. The difference is of course, this nurse is black and foreign, and as such, is held to a far higher expected standard of performance. For our friend, this was when she realized that with all her experience, she had been living in a bubble too.
And at this point I brought up something that they hadn't considered earlier. I have known them since my wife and I started dating and now live across the road from them. However, because of this they likely haven't considered the challenge for me to get to this point in life. And, while our life is far from easy and our house is far from perfect, there is some sense of pride (wrong word, can't think of the right word) in getting this far, as it wasn't that long ago that I was struggling so much financially and career-wise, that I didn't know how I was going to survive through days, lets alone through to pay day.
There aren't that many foreigners that have managed to make it this far starting with only a suitcase of unsuitable clothes, even if it has been 20 years now. And, I hope there will be many more to come, because as many have noticed, foreigners tend to work harder as employees, because they have to and they are constantly under the microscope, constantly with the feeling of the nationalistic sword of Damocles hanging over their head.
And this isn't said to say how well I have done, because I haven't, I have been lucky. I was able to build a network of friends who helped me through the early days and made the struggle worth it. I was able to be part of a good family (my ex's) to know that that was something I wanted to build for myself. And I was able to put in the work too, without feeling like a victim, or feeling like I was ever selling out. There is a lot of luck involved with life.
But, we all live in a bubble and while most of the time we focus on the bubbles that make us unaware of those worse off than ourselves, there is the other side of the bubble too. The one where we live in a negative bubble, where we see ourselves as victims and that anyone that is doing better than us, has done so dishonestly, or due to privilege of some kind. This kind of bubble does not rise above, it sinks below.
And I wonder, when we look at each other from our respective bubbles, do we recognize that our view is distorted by our experience and our wild imaginations? Do we understand that while we judge those above us, we are spending our time and energy on something that isn't helping us?
Is it fair?
No. Life is never fair. It isn't fair that some people have to work harder than others for the same result. It isn't fair that opportunity changes depending on where a person is born or to whom. But fair or not, we can only live our experience and if we spend all of our time worrying about what others are doing with their lives, we never live our own. This doesn't mean we can't reflect on or help others, but when thinking about them stops us from being our best, we need to reappraise our approach.
It would be great if all societies and cultures were built in a way that everyone was supported to be their best, but that just isn't the case and is unlikely to ever be the way it is. Humans are probably never going to be that enlightened, because we are petty, which is why arbitrary traits are so important to us, even though they have no bearing on the outcomes that we want.
If we actually want to improve the world, we have to be better tomorrow than we are today and the easiest way to start that journey, is to improve ourselves. And, what we do shouldn't be dictated by proving others wrong, but rather being the best we can be, because we owe it to ourselves, no one else.
If we are doing okay, we shouldn't be apologizing for where we have come from or where we are now, we should be doing the best we can to be the best we can, daily. That way, when we look in the mirror, no matter what others think of us, and no matter our results, we can look into our own eyes and no that we did what we could.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
