It seems that we are always performing. We all have an act. And we all have to act. It's like everything we do has been already scripted. Even writing this blog. And there is pressure to perform. Lots of pressure. Often a sense of desperation. If I don't do it, well, no one else is going to do it, so I have to do it. I found myself feeling this way yesterday. I simply did not feel like going to work. But I went to work anyway. No one else was going to do it and I have to keep body and soul together. Which means, paying the rent on time. If I don't pay the rent, then I will get evicted and there would be no option remaining but, probably, street homelessness.
This is to illustrate just how desperate ordinary life has become in my city, Vancouver. When I was a lot younger, it was not uncommon for me to move more than once a year. I think my record was when I was around twenty and twenty-one. Besides my mother's couch, which served as my default resort three times during that period, On the day of my twentieth birthday, I flew back to Vancouver following six months in Toronto. I stayed with my mother for two months, March and April, then I went to live with a friend in his tiny house in East Vancouver. I lasted there only for one month, then I went to live in a shared house with five other people, just almost across the lane. We were not compatible, so, following a couple of weeks on mother's couch in December, I returned to my friend's house where I stayed till April. Then I found my own apartment that spring where I stayed till September. I moved to a small suite in a huge house in October, moved in December to a room with shared kitchen in the same house, then in March to a shared house in a lovely neighbourhood. Which is to say I moved about three times a year. No problem, no risk of homelessness.
Those days, of course, are long gone, and housing is very precious and desperate and so we either settle for what we already have, or we move out of Vancouver. far away from Vancouver. Very far away from Vancouver. If I did not live in BC Housing, and if the government wasn't subsidizing my rent, I would not be able to live in my apartment. Because there are zero alternative options for housing in my city, I have to keep my apartment. Which means that I have to keep on working, whether I feel like it or not. Desperation. Fortunately, I enjoy my work, even if it is obscenely underpaid.
But I do get to retire in about a year, and I will still have the option of continuing to work at reduced contracts, but not really needing to, I hope.
So, I played the role yesterday as mental health peer support worker Aaron. I had a cancelation that morning, but went dutifully to my next gig, which is a small group and had a fairly enjoyable chat with two of our clients. Then I walked across the city, a distance of four miles in the wind and the cold rain, to my other client. Not pleasant, the wind nearly destroyed my umbrella and I was negotiating a lot of anxiety about a friendship and my upcoming trip. My reason for walking in such deplorable weather? Well, for the exercise, of course. And the fresh air. and time to think and process things. But also my client was needing contact with someone and because of his disabilities, also needing someone to help him get outside for a walk in the fresh air. So, I had to perform. Not just because of my professional obligations, nor simply to get paid, but because I have a crucial role to play in helping to facilitate the wellbeing of another person. It is role-playing, yes. But sometimes we have to role-play in order for the reality of what we are acting out to actually sink into our soul and become a part of who we are.
Yes, darling atheist materialists. There is such s thing as the human soul. Even you have one. Whether you want to or not.
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