Life As Performance Art 83

I live in social housing, which is to say that my rent is subsidized by government funding. By living in, and requiring this help, it is like making a public admission that I have somehow failed in life. There is a certain stigma interwoven in this process. This is a particularly cruel and unjust standard by which we measure ourselves and others, and it is the bitter fruit of capitalism. By becoming poor and in need of these government supports I have already said that I have failed, I have lost at life, and that somehow I am always going to have to be dependent on others in order to get by and survive in life. Never mind that even the most successful people owe their success as much to the support of others and good luck and timing as to their own hard work, perseverance an ingenuity. But they enjoy all the outward signs of success. They are the ones who complain bitterly about having to pay high taxes for keeping alive the likes of people like me. They also adorn their luxury homes and properties with huge angry red and black lawn signs protesting the recent luxury home taxes. Poor dears. I do not know why my neighbours have to live here in this building. I know my reasons. And as far as I'm concerned, I haven't lost at anything. Like anyone else, I have had to navigate my own unique set of circumstances and obstacles. Not everyone is going to survive a highly dysfunctional family in order to go on to thrive. I certainly didn't. But I coped. I coped so well, that I have been able to carve out a rather decent existence where I can bring home a small paycheque from a profession that is loaded with stigma, and still have enough money leftover in the bank to take off every year on a month-long vacation in Costa Rica or Mexico or Colombia. When I moved here to Candela Place, it was with the understanding that that was where I would be living for a long time, perhaps even for the rest of my life. It has become completely impossible for anyone on a low income to live in this city, unless we are receiving generous government supports. This has become the way of this current era. I had to reckon with this reality in 2002, at the age of 46. I knew that without university education, without competitive credentialed skills, and with unions being completely gutted, that I could only hope for an income that would be a little bit above minimum wage. Unfair? Of course it's unfair. There is nothing fair about capitalism. At least now I can relax a little, even if I am living off the taxpayers' "generosity" (but I am also a taxpayer). What this has made me is a refugee in my own city, in my own country. In order to survive for the long term, I have had to barter off my dignity, but it hasn't been a huge sacrifice. My dignity doesn't consist in the size of my paycheque, nor my mortgage, nor my possessions, nor my social network. My success as a person is that I have not sold out on my most precious and cherished values. This is not going to gain me much recognition or popularity, and frankly, I really do not care. There are people who will not be my friends because I have zero snob appeal. My circumstances are too humble for their thin little nostrils. I don't care. I don't need shallow people for friends. I also have something they are all lacking. It's called integrity, which apparently is what attracts those imbeciles to me in the first place, but in the end it is also a huge deal-killer for long term friendships. The moral high ground can be a very lonely place, and one must really take care that they are going to be able to withstand the social isolation that often results from putting principals ahead of personal advantage. It does make us better people. It also turns us into complete outsiders, and unfortunately people are still going to need us in just that kind of condition, for their own spiritual nourishment and survival. In the meantime, I live like a refugee in my own country. And every day of my life, I am going to have to cope with this. It isn't really that difficult.