The other day i had a bunch of stuff to do. Things are hectic right now. I'm surrounded by boxes and bin bags. It's like putting your life through a seive and hoping the good stuff makes it through. Amidst the chaos i have to keep tabs on a number of forms and letters, all important for the things going on right now. Being unsettled and out of your comfort zone can make you edgy and frankly, when i go out and mix with the general public, i'm edgy anyway.
You know that film Falling Down? I'm a heartbeat away from being that guy, especially when i have to enter the concrete hell called a 'Supermarket'. When i was a kid, supermarkets sold food. Tinned goods mostly. Now, my local Sainsbury's sells everything. It's like a department store. As such, it commands attention not just from regular folk doing a weekly shop for groceries, but also those looking to clothe themselves on the cheap, or buy electronic goods from somewhere other than Argos. Couple this with it still being the ass end of the school holidays, and i picked a bad day to walk into Sainsbury's.
Before i even got to the Star Trek-esque doors that open for you, my pace of walking was forcibly slowed by a family in front of me. Now, before i go on i should make clear that i do have prejudices. Many of them. Not socially appalling or just plain dumb ones like racism or sexism. I have prejudices against chavs. Idiots. Boy Racers. Slags. You know the kind of thing i'm on about. If i see someone walking towards me with white track suit bottoms, a name brand t shirt, a baseball cap perched precariously on the head and the same swagger i saw Fiddy Cent do in his most recent video, i'm going to label him a dick. If that offends anyone, tough. I would put good money on me being right, and frankly if i was proved wrong, i'd be happy then too. I love situations where i can't lose!
So this family in front of me.....they were fat. Not appallingly fat like you see some women where you can't tell where their breasts end and their belly begins, just fat as in they'll be at the breasts/belly stage one day, but they're still working up to it. Fat girls - as three of them were - tend to wear figure hugging black leggings or other such attire. Not really sure what this achieves, but they all tend to do it. These three didn't let me down. They had that uniform and they wore it with pride. Since they slowed my pace, and i was no longer wrapped up in my own world and it's problems and how i just wanted to get in there, get some migraine pills and get back home to continue decanting 34 years into brown boxes, i was free to get a good look at these people.
We've all heard the speech......"It's glandular". I'm sure it is. Being dishonest with yourself is simple. I think we all are. Daily. It's called denial, and we do it consciously or otherwise. There is every chance that for some people, the problem is a fuck up in their bodies. The technical term 'fuck up' isn't new by the way, sorry if it threw anyone there. However the more likely scenario, is that fat cells are collecting due to a bad diet and lack of exercise. The third thing could be that it's a mental problem.....you're not going to be the prettiest girl in the class so you comfort eat your way out of it. If they're going to call you fat anyway, you might as well give them something to call you fat about.
Rather than looking down on this family, or dismissing them as fat and lazy, instead i thought about a quote i'd read earlier that day by the Greek philosopher Socrates. He said "The unexamined life is not worth living". He was defending his role as a philosopher, and he did so in a very elegant way. When i looked at the fat family i wondered if they were aware of how fortunate they are. To eat so much and work so little as to become fat, should be considered a luxury. Generations before us struggled, then they struggled with two world wars in just under forty years. They didn't have an obesity epidemic. Gluttony i thought, is a gift. It's a symbol of how well the human race is doing. In some quarters obviously. Areas of the world are still starving, there's an imbalance there, but i'm not addressing that here.
Once i got passed the fatties, i wondered further about everyone in the supermarket, and how self aware any of them were. It tied in with a book i'm reading about social economics, which describes how ignorant we can be of our everyday actions, and the effect they have on us as people, our well-being, and the way we interact with friends and family.
To go back to our chav friends earlier, the uniform they wear - that of the bad boy rapper - to me represents self denial. Wearing those clothes and walking like you have a butt plug inserted may make you feel like you'll pop a cap in the ass of anyone dumb enough to cross you, but most chavs are skinny fuckers aren't they? Clearly the attire and the swagger provide them with some degree of confidence, and they just run with it.
I've been told in the past that i look down on stupid people. This may be true, but who defines stupid? Stupidity is, like everything else - wealth, beauty, status - relative. Besides, i hate ignorance a lot more than stupidity. If you're stupid by choice, that is you don't want to learn, you don't want to improve yourself because you know it all anyway, then it's a form of ignorance and yes you're a dick. To be aware that you need to learn, that maybe you don't know it all and never will, that illustrates self-awareness. It proves that you've looked at yourself and acted upon what you've seen.
Our actions are governed by a number of things; brain chemicals, upbringing, past experiences and stimuli. I've recently read a book on the brain and the author, Susan Greenfield, was incensed at people who see the brain as a computer. Well sorry Sooz, but i go one step further. I think people are computers. In fact i think we're computer processors programmed to relate to our surroundings.
Where you sit right now, determines how you're acting. If you're in your house, in the warm, just reading this drivel, then you're quite comfortable. If it's YOUR house, you're probably more confident than someone who's renting. Just slightly, but it's enough to affect your actions out there in the big wide world. If you were reading this in Afghanistan, in the war zones, you wouldn't be sat there with a drink and smoke. You'd be running for cover to avoid whizzing bullets.
Why? Because your brain has taken in information from the outside world and you act upon it in the way it considers best. That's it. That's your life. The way you act upon it is determined by many different things as listed above, and it's enough to make us all individual - especially the upbringing part. Our glorious individuality though, is just a reaction to the world. To use an extreme example such as Afghanistan is just there to prove a point. Some people wouldn't run for cover, some people would try and be a hero, others would simply freeze. It's how you're wired, and it's how you're wired on that particular day too.
The fat family will continue to eat more than they should. They'll become ill quite early i expect. Diabetes, fluid in the ankles, high cholesterol and risk of heart attack. To me, these things could happen to any one of us. I don't find it sad. Illness and death are inevitable. I find the idea that they've never looked at themselves long enough to avoid those things a great deal more tragic. The mirror can be a scary place but it's what everyone else sees. Those brave enough to be comfortable with the person staring back at them have my respect. Recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have done that. They've examined their lives and made a change because they've had to. The rest of us carry on the lies we've become comfortable with because it gets us through the day. I don't think it's enough to just 'get through' life. I think it'd be a whole lot more fun to enjoy it, and i don't think you can do that until you know who you are and what you want. This year i've took great leaps towards discovering the answers to those things, which is why i'm surrounded by bin bags and brown boxes....
No comments:
Post a Comment