The World, Right Now
A Rant on the Current Conditions of Contemporary Human Existence
I always felt that something was missing. Around the house or on a grander scale. Should I say, around the world.
In the middle of a cup of a coffee , I would wonder what that was. Why it was. Whether it was missing within me or somewhere on my study table. Perhaps at the corners of my mother’s eyes, her hopes for me. If it could it be small or big.
Then, when I was presented with the topic, “what the world needs right now”, it hit me drastically just how much the world needs right now. Or, at least, how much I think is wrong with the world today.
I have been recently very annoyed most of all by the load shedding that has been happening these past weeks, that we are currently back on this week.
For all those of you who are curious as to what is up with South Africa, we are going through power supply problems. From the earliest 2000s, I was about five or six, my family and all our neighbors would experience power outages: no lights, except for the candles we would light up and cuddle right by. These power outages usually happened around the same time and lasted for a few hours each day, for as long as weeks or months.
It is 2021 and it is still happening. No lights, no internet, and thankfully I have a gas stove for all the cooking and my amazing hot water that I hopelessly need to bathe with.
It bothers me more now because I am an adult who does not think it’s fun anymore. I’m not going to start running around in the dark streets with my friends. These folks are lawyers and engineers and housewives now. Also because it has gotten a lot worse than when I was a child – it happens, at most, three times a day and lasts longer. Because I also have work and projects that require that I have a secure internet connection. It frustrates me completely.
I want to live in a world where I’m not worrying about needs as basic as electricity and water. Yes, water is a big one as well. We’re practically out of the stuff. It’s absurd.
I open the television and I see women pushing wheelbarrows filled with buckets, going to a single source of water for every household in town. I turn on my window and I see an elderly woman pushing a wheelbarrow with four of five buckets filled with water, coming from the single water tank that serves us all here.
Load shedding affects everything and everyone. Everyone, equally. Whether you are rich or poor. The whole city is dark. Whether you are the CEO or the intern, you can't get your work done.
It has given me a tiny sense of equality. The tiniest you ever find. Until the thought blows over in my face, revealing the fact that certain groups of people just can never truly be equal, under any circumstances in the world. My mother and I are completely powerless against our darkness. We have no choice but to accept it, to keep living with how much we cry about it.
I am pretty sure Mrs Elaine Richinston-Diamondpearls and her three children can absolutely choose not to be affected by their darkness, however that may be.
Then I think about how her children can also go to a university of their choosing without worrying about the fees, without waiting anxiously for the outcomes of a scholarship application. University? Elaine’s little offsprings can buy pants worth my tuition. Pants? They never worry about what they will have to eat tomorrow for breakfast. About how expensive it is to fulfil their dreams.
But on the bright side, my friends can be as gay as they want to be. Sure, not as gay as they want, but as gay as long as they are not kissing each other in the public spaces of select areas of the world. That is, any part in every neighborhood on every continent. They can get married to each other in some countries at least. Although some people find this laughable at best and offensive at worst. They can tell people about themselves through what they wear and how they dance, or in running for their lives in some cruel dirty corner of our beautifully green earth.
It is both amazing and sad how far we have all come and yet how long we still have to go to correct the wrongs that history done did. Against us, all of us: any group of people who have been denied completely normal and healthy lives in their countries and communities. Not to mention fighting the good fight against the groups of people who feel so wronged by our flags and our voices.
I could go on and on about the colors of all the grass: greener elsewhere, red in my front yard. Either way we have ruined most of our environment and that is why it has now gotten hotter than ever. Soon we might not have any grass left. So now, let me ask you. What possibly could the world need right now? We have it all.
Author's Notes
Thank you for reading my rant.
This article was prompted by the Broad Media Writing Competition for South African "university students and young graduates who fancy themselves as good writers".
The topic of entry being: What the world needs right now. I got a little riled up considering how the answer is everything. Literally everything. From equality and empathy and a deep reflection on all the aspects that have come to form our existence (social, political, environmental, you name it), and social justice, human rights, human needs, actionable solutions to everything, and and and the list becomes endless as soon as you start writing it. And then we can work our way up.
Lastly, I know you are asking yourself why I did not just enter the competition, because I did not. That is because they mostly deal in business and tech. And I am a creative writer for the arts and culture and society. We would never work.
Cheers.
