I want to grab the words and write them down before they're gone. I just got one of those feelings of poetry. It was on my lips and it was about to come pouring out, and then it stopped. I don't get poetry into writing very often because it always stops coming, as soon as I get a pen or get ready to type. I'm not a very determined poet.
I haven't stayed up this late in a long time. I know, I know, it's only 11:52. Not even midnight and I'm only 22. I can't believe it, I'm 22 and I have a job. I'm not a kid anymore! It feels weird. I fought growing up the whole way and I still feel like I'm fighting it. I remember once when I was about 6 or 7 my brother and I were playing with dolls in my bedroom and my mom came in and said "you are so lucky to be kids! you can just play all day while your parents work, work, work" and I remember my cheast bursting with pride that I was a kid and not an adult. I felt sorry for my mom and all of her worries, but oh so happy and lucky to be a kid. I guess that sounds silly - a little girl terrified of responsibility and adulthood. I'm still that girl. But here I am!
Today I bought a shirt from Walmart. I shouldn't have done this. I constantly tell people they shouldn't go to walmart. I could visualize the clothing manufacturing plant in India (the shirt was made in India) and the people getting paid 3 cents an hour to make shirts. I bought the shirt for 15 dollars. It probably took less than an hour to make the shirt, but assuming it took an hour, I paid 500X the amount the person who made the shirt was paid. Where did the rest of the money go? I guess into paying for the cotton, the dye, the equipment used to make the shirt, the transportaion costs, the salaries of the managers, the expenses of sending the shirt from India to Texas, and ultimately, the money I spent contributed to the net profit for Wal Mart. The problem with companies like Wal Mart is that the driving force for Wal Mart's actions is not people - it is money, plain and simple. And money doesn't care about anybody. That's the simple truth. The money I paid contributed almost zilch to the local Indian community where it was manufactured, and again, almost zilch for my community. Walmart doesn't care too much about the well being of it's workers in India. And again, Walmart doesn't care too much about it's customers in the US - except that the workers produce and the customers buy, because thats what keeps Walmart alive. I shouldn't have bought the shirt. It's a brown soft shirt with yellow and pink flowers embroidered into it. It reminds me of hippies and comfortableness.
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It reminds me of the terrible inequality in this world. 3 billion people in the world (half of the people in the world) live on under 2 dollars a day. 1.5 billion of those people live on less than a dollar a day.
But this is the system. Since the beginning of time, there have been economic systems, some have been better than others. There was hunting and gathering, feaudalism, monarchys, tribes, slavery, the industrial revolution - and finally this, globalisation. This'll probably be the one that does us in for good.
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But it's a pretty shirt.
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I drive 20 miles to work each day. I work in a plant that manufactures foam. I eat meat and dairy products. I am part of the system that is ruining the earth and hurting people and life in general. We are all part of it, in one way or another, unless you are one of those rare people who lives totally outside of the system, like in Alaska in the backwoods. I feel guilty. There was a time in my life when I felt sick with guilt. I was depressed about the world and about my own self. I'm not depressed any more - I guess I'm disappointed in myself. I'm also unsure about what to do about it - how do I reconcile what I believe with how I live? I'm thinking about it.......
