Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

more Cats

Know what pisses me off? Being told what to think, how to live, who I can or can’t talk to, what I can or can’t listen to. All that rules and control stuff.

I know I write from a position of western white priviledge. I know I can’t fully understand the issues facing some groups of women. I acknowledge and accept that, unlike some. Doesn’t stop me getting angry about stuff though.

So, off you go, walk a mile in my shoes - no, take the good ones, it’s fine, go ahead I prefer my scruffy gardening trainers anyway, honest. Then you’ll be a mile away, out of my hair and I can go get some new shoes….  Go further if you like, keep the shoes. 

You want to know what’s really getting at me today?

We try, don’t we? We scream into the wind and it snatches our words away. We put up bigger and bigger No Swimming signs and we are ignored.  We watch our children grow and learn the attitudes and opinions thrust at them through the world around them, through the TV, magazines, friends and relatives and we scream silently inside as insidious programming takes place and it’s out of our control. We question and we wonder if we’re actually going crazy because this thing that controls us is just so huge it can’t possibly be real.

Can it? 

In the UK, we live in a world where our homes are fed the fuel needed to keep us warm, power our internet, lights and appliances, at an ever increasing cost. We are supplied with food, at a cost and we are told what is good to eat, what is bad. We are told how to live, where to live and who it is acceptable to live with. We are instructed, from the moment of birth or before, that we are weaker, less and in need of protection. The advice on any aspect of life is out there to find, and it’s all about control and power over the individual.

And if we defy it?

We are ridiculed, ostracised and ignored. But by who? Oh that’d be everyone. People you thought were friends, people you share DNA with, people you thought were like you, and The Authorities. By the language we use, by the job titles we are forced into, by those who teach our children for us, by those who care for us when we are sick. By those we hope will keep us safe.

Look around you, who do you see? They are the sharks. They circle and they wait and if you put a foot in the water, if you dare to think then they will strike. It’ll be subtle at first, insinuating into your life and thoughts and most will comply, become part of the sharks. But some will continue to scream into the wind, some will build the boats and those are labelled as crazy, because there are no sharks in the water right? We who continue are isolated and driven apart when we should be drawing closer and sharing the knowledge we have gained, sharing the task of building our A.R.K.

What did you do today? Did you scream into the wind? Did you nod and comply? Did you become a shark?