The last party
This is a story I just made up to describe only the truth.
There is the alarm. A new day begins. It is half past five. The city is coming alive once again. I better get going. Someone might report me if they spot me sleeping here. I slept for about an hour. Not much but enough to give me the requisite energy to walk to the bus station. My ride is leaving in an hour. I must head back to my town and then prepare for the long one-way journey abroad. Well, “abroad” is a figure of speech: I have no permanent residence here either. A migrant is all I am. I have not lived in Western Europe before, though I have worked and cohabited with many individuals from different parts of the continent. We are so much alike.
My bones are ice cold. I cannot think of something more real in this moment. If they ever ask me to swear an oath to the highest being I believe in, it will have to be this. Nobody said the park would be a comfortable place to stay. I had no such false impression. I came here because it was the only option. We never learn the stories of those who end up on the streets. They are just there, withering away at the margins of civilisation. Most do not even pay attention to them, as if they blend into the backdrop, perhaps as some quirky piece of the decor. Some may think these homeless fellows did it to themselves and deserve to live in misery. I have my doubts, even if the brunt of the blame on certain cases falls on the given person. Choice cannot be the sole determinant in a human experience that is contingent on happenstance. There are wars, economic recessions, structural poverty and crime, drugs, epidemics, and ignorance. Personal agency as such is too simplistic of a metric.
I am not homeless, though I have been close to it already. It disheartens me to live like this. There is a part of me that feels ashamed for my financial predicament. “You should be doing better”, I often tell myself. Then I cry, as I have no answer as to how to reverse the downward spiral. I am pushing against the boundaries. What else is there other than to go down the slippery slope of illicit conduct? On the other hand, I understand that issues are systemic and that attributing everything to negligence, or idleness, or lack of creativity, or whatnot, is to blame the victim, at least partially. Apart from disappointment, I am also angry with myself. This is not made manifest as resentment. It is not of a destructive sort. Rather, it is the fuel that drives me forward, to hustle as hard as possible, to persevere with my head held high and to be as resilient as I can.
Visiting the capital was a tough choice. I wanted to join my friends for a last reunion and this was the only way to afford it. I do not own a car. I must rely on public transportation. There is no intercity connection after 9 PM. Nor can I pay for a hotel room. So here I am… I wondered around all night until I could not stay awake anymore. My friends organised the party for me. Everyone is happy about my future prospects and they have all helped me prepare for what is to come. Nicole paid for the plane ticket with her credit card. Bless her. I am bankless and could thus not carry out the online transaction myself. I gave her the money back in cash. Leo gifted me this warm jacket he got a couple of years ago. It looks nice and effective. In exchange, I helped his parents with some renovations they were doing at their house. I do what I can to be helpful, even if it is not much.
The financial meltdown hits the hardest those at the lowest parts of the income distribution. People like me who perform manual labour for a living. Many employers turn the crisis into a business opportunity, by using the economic headwinds as a pretext to erode labour rights with impunity. The government is complicit in this offensive. It is rolling back its expenditure, which leads to a cascade of effects including fewer opportunities for work and a weaker or non-existent social safety net. Meanwhile, prices for basic goods and accommodation remain sky high. Job security is absent, landlords may force tenants out in short notice, and savings are depleted.
In the news they talk about the economy as if it is a realm of reality that is distinct from what happens to people every day. The recession is, in fact, a reconstitution of personal lives. Most are forced to change their routines and to suffer in silence. For me, it has amounted to a crisis of identity. I have realised how the notion of a homeland is not necessarily innocent and how governments will resort to the use of inane patriotic palaver once the age-old policy of bread and circuses becomes untenable. Shameless politicians intensify the jingoistic rhetoric as they rave about some ahistorical glorious past. In their self-righteous, yet utterly pretentious and fabricated, world-view “we” hold the moral high ground that other ostensibly lesser peoples want to take for themselves. Then they start blaming immigrants, refugees, or those mysterious “external actors” for their own policy failures. It happens every time like clockwork.
That is what is unfolding at the macroscopic level. The micro side of this reality takes the form of shallow conventional wisdom in interpersonal matters. Many times I tried to explain the phenomena I am intimately aware of, I got told to “be a man”. There was no thought put into the systemic magnitudes as if those do not exist at all and each of us operates in a vacuum where only their manliness, or whatever, matters. When I asked them politely what exactly did they mean with such an exhortation, they told me to be responsible and tough. I already am responsible. I have been earning my keep since my early teenage years: they simply do not know what they are talking about. Besides, I expect everyone to be mindful of their deeds and to take care of their affairs, to the extent possible. At any rate, the salient point of accountability is not bad, even if it is insufficient. Though the advice to “be tough” is at best naive and at worst disingenuous because it does not find any fault in the perpetrators of injustice. If I say that it is not right for my employer to keep me every day at work for two more hours without extra compensation and to threaten me with dismissal if I dare raise an objection, they reply with the moralistic trope about “real men”.
Patriotism for the masses, machismo for the individuals… A toxic cocktail throughout. Then, when all that shadow play and bellicose language leads to the inevitable armed conflicts, people like me who are physically fit and cannot afford to relocate to some haven will receive a formal letter calling them to the front lines. The authorities will be appealing to each person’s sense of duty: “the nation needs you” becomes the prevailing narrative. I would be willing to fight tooth and nail for a country that is there for us when we need it. That is an honourable cause. But not for this. To be marginalised, ridiculed, and then converted into cannon fodder. A nation that does not value us and only treats us as expendable matter is not one I will ever defend. No.
The economic downturn has been enlightening in this regard. I have learnt more about the world and understood subtle yet crucial points that formal education blithely ignores. Still, I cannot avoid the fact that these are the prevailing conditions and my power to affect them ranges from limited to none. Even joining a mass protest with some trade union is a luxury when I cannot afford to not get paid for that day. It thus becomes a personal matter. Precarity is a condition that extends far beyond household economics. I feel unsafe every moment of the day. It engenders in me a visceral fear of imminent catastrophe. One tiny misstep or some everyday event like a small accident that sidelines me for a couple of weeks and I am on the streets or in prison. This is life on the precipice; a life where my availability is the only force that guarantees my continued presence. Even if I were the toughest person physically and mentally, I know that I would still not be robust to the slightest shock. What disempowers me the most though is the feeling that I am trying as hard as I can. When I work two jobs, when I do not respond to my abusive employer because I absolutely need the paycheck, when I count the pennies at the end of the week to buy a loaf of bread… when I do all this while living in a basement, I know that I am being honest with myself regarding the effort I put in. This is not a rationalisation to explain away my laziness or whatever. I am trying as best I can, but it is not enough. It breaks my heart.
I would normally not have joined my friends at the party last night. I could have saved the money I spent to get here and then at the restaurant. Those meals make me uncomfortable with how much they cost. 30 euro may not be a lot in absolute terms, though it is a sum well above the rates I am used to. Whenever I buy groceries, I check the price of everything and only pick the essentials. It makes it hard for me to enjoy the food when I know that the cost of one serving would cover the needs of an entire week, if spent more diligently. Still, I could not let this mental block deny me the chance to see my friends for the last time. I have not been as close to them as I would have liked, though they matter to me. There were many instances when I turned down their offer to join them on a trip to the countryside or a night out. Such a lifestyle has not been financially viable for me, but I still feel guilty about not doing as much as I should. Maybe I am wrong in this outlook, as it is burdensome on my conscience, though I know that it is one thing to consider something rationally and another to embed it in my habits.
The people who are close to me remind me that it is not all doom and gloom. We can still help each other out in overcoming the challenges. I want to reach a point where I never prioritise another task over spending time with friends and family. It is not about being wealthy, but having a modicum of stability. I would then make room in my daily agenda for ample sociability, to tend to the needs of those I care about and to meet others that can enrich my life. I may then figure out what sort of activities are within my budget, but I will not suffer through this agony of radical uncertainty. Community is the antidote for the emotional impact of precarity. It is the closest thing to a panacea that I know of, however imperfect it may be. The connections between people combined with their proximity and availability form the milieu that lets each of them operate with a greater sense of safety. When I am in that environment, I trust that there will be others around to join me at the kitchen table, spend time with me without having any ulterior motives, hold me accountable if I say something inconsiderate or act recklessly…
Community is all about having faith in people. This is a quality I often lacked, as I was too absorbed in my own troubles. Even though I was in a social setting, I had no community because I did not have the right mindset and accompanying disposition to be part of a group. Faith and trust come about organically through continuous exposure to each other and with shared activities. I think back to my days as a child when all of us in the neighbourhood would play football until nighttime. Most of us did not own a ball. We would instead visit the doctor’s house and ask if our friend there could come play with us. If he was studying and could not attend right away, his mother would offer us the ball. There was an ethos of sharing resources and expressing solidarity towards each other. I cannot recall a single case where the response was “go get your own ball”. That would have ran counter to the very worldview of our society. There is an implicit commitment to personal responsibility even in such a communal context, which is that each member of the group does not abuse the commons and that every one lives in accordance with the same norms. It is all about fair play.
Migrants who are uprooted in one way or another cannot easily recreate this social reality, though it still happens in multicultural countries: individuals tend to cluster in places where more of their kin is located. I think this is the side of tribalism that is benign. The key is to not treat it as a closed club. Exclusivity combined with a sense of superiority is what inwardly corrupts the propensity of humans to congregate. I can tell that I am missing this from my life and I know that it is not a yearning to pick sides in some grand “us versus them” confrontation. The need for others is not in contradiction with the capacity of an individual to improve their self. Only if I am a better version of myself can I be of service to others. It means that I try to reach a position of relative peace where I can provide for those I care about. If I am struggling to survive, then I cannot satisfy anybody’s needs as I will be putting my survival in jeopardy. Nobody is better off in such a scenario. It also implies that I learn more about the differences between people, tolerate diversity, show compassion, be wise in what I say and how I communicate, and remain open-minded.
Communities are unlike clubs. The latter form around some common belief or activity. They are more homogeneous in that regard. In a wider social setting, there are individuals with different traits and trajectories. I do not need everybody to be a replica of me in appreciating the same things I do. Each is their own person and I have the attitude to learn more about them and be amazed by the bottomless potential of this world. The mind requires minds to discover the cosmos. The more varied those are, the richer the experience will be. We all have inherent to us a need to make connections, be it with other humans or life at-large. Being too inward looking and selfish is thus a recipe for loneliness or sociopathy. It will either be ruinous long-term for the person that experiences loneliness or disastrous for everyone else who has the misfortune to be in the sociopath’s way.
The bus is here. Not much else remains for me to do here. I had a good time at the party, despite struggling against those money-related inhibitions. I know I will probably not meet my friends in the foreseeable future, even though I saluted them with a “see you soon”. This is a déjà vu of what happened all those years ago when I had to leave my place of birth. I have always wanted to rejoin my mates, but I could not. How are they doing? Did any of them make a family? How is it to have kids? I do not know anything about them and it saddens me how things turned out. There is no fixing the past though. All I can do is learn from what has transpired and apply those lessons to the present at the earliest opportunity.
Julie asked me why I was not especially enthusiastic last night. “You are going to a better place”, she exclaimed. There is some truth to that, in the sense that I will be earning more than the minimum wage for the first time in my life. Though it also means that I am once again making a sacrifice out of necessity. The people I care about will not be with me. I am yet again starting from scratch as a stranger. It is as if I enjoy being a riddle, an unknown quantity, a mystery figure that remains disengaged from the fray of the action. This is not who I am. Will I ever see Julie’s pale face and grey eyes? Will we have the opportunity to sit together again at the cafeteria and talk for hours on end about the topics of our mutual interest? There is the written word, yes, and I can text them. It is not the same though. I do not feel anything special when I read a message. I cannot sense my correspondent’s intent, I cannot feel their warmth. There is no human connection there.
I have learnt to go with the flow and adapt to evolving circumstances. I will likely benefit from what is to come. All I can do now is hope that the conditions will one day be favourable to set my base somewhere. All this toil is pointless if there is none out there to share its fruits with. Like when I was a child, I want the people and the ball to play some football. My aspiration is for a day when I will not be building on shifting sands. I shall then do my best to nurture a community that I am a part of. I am ready to put my faith in others. I do not know how or with whom, but I will try in earnest.
May everybody here fare well. They know I love them even though I never told them.