Monday wasn't very interesting. No, Not very interesting At all. Just a day at work, like ...erm... five days a week. Tuesday, was more so, but more eventful. Of all the things, I know where one customer is going for her hen do, wher e another is going for her birthday, and also had one girl break down in tears at the desk at me, whilst proclaiming "physiotherapy is my life". That last one was particularly difficult, however...because when someone is obviously upset, there's very little you can do, except try to empathise with them, explain that you understand how they feel - and not just do so by saying it,m but explaining it. And hope that at the end of it, they come out of it feeling positive. Which is often more difficult to say than do. yes, a funny day today.Came home, got home early, and spent some time playing catch up with friends on the phone. Some people I'm never in touch with enough, but thats the way it is - its difficult to keep in touch with everyone you know (looks at phone and some 120+ numbers in it).....yeah, sorry If I am never in touch. Its just one of those things.
One of these days, I'll ring you in little pieces. All cut up and broken up. And sometimes you needs friends when you are like that. The world of mine at the moment, is ok. Some days are quite wearing, and sometimes I feel like the doctor in the South Park movie; just after losing yet another patient, he proclaims "It! Never! Gets! Any! Easier!" and then chortles off whistling. Outside we continue the way we normally do, but the fact of the matter is, it takes its toll. Little by little. The way you see people changes, when you see the same events replay themselves over and over again only with different faces, there's a sense of...inevitability to the way these life scripts are playing towards their conclusion. Sometimes its the fact that the greatest mistakes are those which even with hindsight cannot be undone, a simple error of judgement that will never ever go away, and haunt you like a score of unpaid debts - a mistake, one simple mistake which will haunt and affect your entire life.
Maybe its just teenage impulsiveness and naiveity, that moment (as Springsteen sang where Bobby said he'd pull out but Bobby stayed in....these stupid decisions we make when at the age we are, we don't see the full scope and impact of conseqauences, of how they will affect our entire life. Maybe its the fact that at 16, reckless and impulsive, you did something and got caught. And the record stays with your forever. You wait for that conviction to be spent, and then employers look at tthat long gap, and wonder why you spent that time on the rock n roll. Maybe its that you spent your growing years as a teenager just drifting, and then with few qualifications, wondered why you had such difficulty finding work, competing with the other 145,000 people who had just left school too with no qualifications.
And all you can do is survive the best you can, day in, day out. Everyday in my job, I see maybe a dozen or so of these people, and there's nothign I can do to make it right. There's so little I can do. All of these things ...well, how can I put it? I'm there to help, and there's onlyu so far that help can do. The scripts of our lives, set at an early age.... and played out with tedious inevitability.
Everyday,I feel just a sense of helplessness at it all. I really do. And then I read how over 50% of teenagers are unfit for work when they leave school, and I wonder - where do they all go? What of this future we are building for ourselves?
For a long time, Tony Blair was so concerned with emprie building, of securing his own legacy, he forget to see the seeds he had planted as they started to grow. In thirty years time, what will we have - courtesy of "public-private partnerships", we will have hospitals we will have paid for well over the odds, yet do not own.They will be in the hands of big business; we will have bought them for other people to profit from them, yet we will continue to pay for these things we do not own and be held hostage - nay ransom - for the very hospitals we pay for, whilst fat cats in the city will wonder how to spend their profits on gold plated hovercraft.
And what else did we spend our money on? Some damn idiot crusade to install democracy in a country that had no historical precedent for it, that we invaded against international law, and will take nothing from it aside from awakening a sleeping giant and filling ti with an eternal resolve, an everlasting hatred to blowback on us like the elephant in the room. What do you think will happen, when those fatherless sons grow up? Do you really think they will just go meekly into the night?
Maybe I'm judgemental. maybe thats just wrong. but the see the chips falling where they may, and I see how easy it would be not to make these mistakes, not to make these fundamental blunders.
The future's bleak. Its not orange.
No comments:
Post a Comment