Front line fear

My wife the counsellor. Bags not her job.

I think if we split I’d be straight on Tinder with a no counsellors need apply.

No she does fantastic work, and it’s needed.

She’s tending to that growing pack, The Unstuck. Families and individuals going through rough times.

I’m not so Stuck myself, depending on the day.

We grownups spinout, the kids soak it all up and she’s in there with first aid.

A lot of the relationship wreckage she sees stems from people going under physically — food, shelter, employment.

Lose the ability to provide for ourselves, our family, and the cortisol tears through the nervous system like a reverse enema. It attacks any certainty like a cancer, and it’s fallout is costly — for self, circle of affected’s, the taxpayer, society.

It’s my ultimate close to home fear.

And no matter where we sit in the wealth stakes, no one is exempt.

All of us are just a ticket away from a derailing. We lose a family member, we go down with the big C. Lose our job, our home.

From Christchurch to Mexico and everywhere in between the earth can shake and suddenly we are the dispossessed.

I’d love to see the weatherman on the telly, instead of giving us the day’s wind and rain, give us a fear and hope report …

“ A 25% increase in apparent fear in the Hutt today due to staff layoffs at one of the Valleys largest employers, while over the hill in Wainuiomata, we’re seeing a 30 degree shift in hope with the community’s Village Veggie project — Meanwhile in Wellington central there’s a gathering belt of anxiety, expected to subside once this trough of concentrated hot air and deceit moves away.

Hopecasters are expecting some change by early next week.”

Fear is the nightporter peeking out of the half light.

Standing in the shadows baby.

When work’s coming in I can be cock of the walk.

When it falls off, I’m playing Twister on a waterbed — suddenly I’m down, flailing till more fish bite.

Stop, drop n’ roll, circle the wagons around the bruises, dust off and re-invent.

Unless we’re in fields like teaching, nursing or the police, job security has become all a bit maybe really.

And with so many global, let alone local variables in the pot — ecologically, economically, tectonically, politically, militarily yada, I figure there’s little chance of physically controlling much anymore.

So for what it’s worth, a few starters here from my ‘things I can control’ in the giving and receiving response kit.

(1) Eye contact, mentioned in an earlier blog, it’s a good starter. I challenge you — make it, smile at strangers — get down on it and put out.

(2) Connection.

When despair creeps in, there’s healing in empathy and touch -

physical and emotional. As well as a cuddle and a cup of tea, the Down need to feel that what they have to give is received.

Down visits many of us from time to time.

(3) Gratitude. Especially low paid workers, the cleaners and care workers in my elderly mum’s home. And hospo staff when they make my coffee, deliver my food, take the dirty dishes away. I’m in there with the eye’s on the thank you’s.

(4) Story rebuild. I try and park the ego and baseline indicators sometimes and realize that my pre-conceived right and wrongs, may in fact be arse about face. Damn. This one is messy, the deconstruction of my story, and it takes on-going recalibration and reboot.

Mandela and the good Bishop Des Tutu brought the term ‘Ubuntu’ to the western world. Simply put, ‘it’s our sharing that connects humanity.’

We can share money, capital, and we can also share goodwill and gesture, the intangibles.

Etched in my memory is 10 minutes of a Sunday afternoon years back when I was working at the St Heliers BP station. In comes a local guy, gold Amex, to top up his Bentley. His eyes and body language saying “I’m lonely, I’m sad, a little defeated”. I’d clocked his Down on a previous visit.

2 mins later a rusty Toyota hi-ace pulls in and a dozen pacific islanders en route to East Tamaki spill out to a pop-up party on the forecourt.

Eyes sparkling, tongues chattering, it was going on.

They both had what the other needed.

Sharing can have some great win-wins.

Melbourne cartoonist Michael Leunig, one of my favourite fear and hope commentators, suggests people can handle austerity if there is a fairness and collective involved.

My mum and dad had similar sentiments to Leunig when referencing the second world war effort.

We can be a bit ‘fuck off that’s mine’ when it comes to sharing our wealth, no surprises given several lifetimes worth of narrative to materially accrue for oneself. The emotional development needed to bring that one round will be work in progress for years to come.

In fact anyone comes round my place and tries to Castro all my stuff and leave me asset-less; ok I get the ideology, but the actuality …. ?

We are frogs in the broth of certain uncertainty.

The disruption is exciting, but havoc on the nerves.

So calling all front line responders …

Intangibles (1) — (3) are an easy kickoff, right now.

And keep up the work on (4).