Life and Other Passions
Some advice to the young, which they don’t want, but here it is.
Develop as many skills and learn as much as you can about a lot of diverse topics, while you can.
Because no matter what you do in your life, either your job will become obsolete, or you will.
The more skills and education and experience you have in all manner of things, the greater your chances of being employed and earning money all your life.
You’ll also have more joy.
Keep yourself open to life.
NO.
Don’t equate a degree with employment potential.
It often does not match.
What counts is what you learned while getting your degree. Not what the degree is.
In my day, experience counted for a lot more than education. It was your education.
Now I would say, a good combination of both experience and education will make your life better. Not just for the money.
I had a lot of growing up to do when I quit my very secure, very well paying government job to pursue a Biology degree. To say I suffered a shock at that transition is an understatement. But it was the shakeup I needed. I was an emotional mess when I started university at the advanced age of 25. That experience matured me quite a bit and boy, did I need that.
It didn’t solve all my problems, but it set me on a better path in many ways.
And I NEVER made the money, nor had the security I had in that government job ever again.
I always had a lot less.
But what I gained mentally can never be equated with money.
Why do rich people persecute the poor?
Why do they take away their benefits, pay them shit, work them to the bone and kick them to the dogs? They take away food, health, shelter and liberty.
Why do they treat seniors so deplorably? It is shocking how our elders are so disrespected and forgotten. They deny them health care or enough money for a decent life.
And women! We are losing all our rights! The handmaidens tale is not fiction.
All the things we fought so hard to wrench from these greedy bastards hands is being snatched back.
If they had their way, we would all be out on the streets, unable to buy a loaf of bread, with only the shirt on our backs.
And they just want more and more and more and more.
Look at what CEO’s make. Look at what their employees take home. Both values are obscene. Vile. Disgusting. Oh my. Look at what Mr. Weston got for being a good CEO to the shareholders lately for Loblaws. Since he successfully overinflates grocery prices so we can’t even afford a head of lettuce, saying companies should make a profit, he got a raise from 8 million to 11.4 million! Because he was, poor fellow, underpaid. Do you believe this crap?
What does it mean to be billionaire? It means you are above the law, above reproach, even above God. You don’t even pay taxes. I pay more taxes on my meager pension. And it means everyone is totally expendable. There are always replacements.
Yes, I am pissed.
I am pissed that we don’t fight back hard enough. We worship worthless, tone deaf, idiot billionaires and celebrities. We throw money at them for their substandard products and shows. We hang on their every opinion as if they are gods. We give them positions of power to rule over us and humiliate us.
We live in a slave economy. We all work and live to provide the rich with lavish lifestyles we will never ever experience, that they constantly shove in our faces.
They shamelessly flaunt their wealth. I am sick of seeing tours of some assholes ten million dollar homes on the beachfront. Reading about their Greek vacations, and five hundred million dollar yachts. The two dozen rare collectible cars they own. The Rembrandts hanging in their living rooms. This is not to show us what we can obtain, it is to keep us hungry, to keep us in our place, to keep us dirt poor and slaves to them.
The pandemic has opened the door to disaster capitalism, that is, it has given the greedy rich an excuse to exploit the powerless and poor, all under the guise it is for our benefit.
Thus, here in Ontario, we are losing our long enjoyed health benefits.
We didn’t see the erosion coming of course, covid up ended everything in our lives. We have been too busy trying to survive.
Ah, but the wealthy always have their eyes, nose and ears tuned to dollar opportunities.
The pandemic has set back surgeries and the like, and this is true. There is a huge backlog.
But instead of funding our nurses and hospitals, the government had a better idea in mind. One that will ultimately end OHIP and make doctors, politicians, pharmaceutical companies. insurance companies and businessmen enormously wealthy. And the rest of us, screamingly poor and sick.
So they create a situation in which private health care are allowed to take OHIP patients, to alleviate the backlog of much needed medical help. Oh, doesn’t that sound good?
NOT.
There is nothing good about private business mucking about in health care. It turns a right into a luxury. That is, it is no longer a right to be healthy, but a privilege. Just as we see that the right to have shelter is now a privilege. A privilege for the RICH ONLY.
They stealthily do this, first by gradually eroding the rights of the sick, the elderly, the poor. Those least able to fight back and stop this. Once it gets past them, then it is too late to turn back and then everyone’s rights are gone.
We’ve had free health care so long, we forget the insidious nature of capitalism. Big business has nothing to do with charity. Nothing to do with rights. It only has to do with money. Money for shareholders. It is only and always about the bottom line. People are just wallets and bank accounts and credit. They don’t care whether you live or die. They don’t care about your problems or conditions.
Health clinics are for profit private businesses. Their goal is to make money. Not take care of people. Thus, they upsell. They happily take what OHIP gives them, but that is not enough. They are a business, not a charity. They want to make huge profits. Now there will be additional never heard of costs to the patient, that will result in out of pocket expenses in the thousands.
It is already happening. I have heard lots of complaints from people who are now expected to pay thousands of dollars for procedures that are FREE under OHIP. At a private clinic, people feel pressured to have more than is necessary done, at a huge cost. If they don’t want the upsell, then they wait just as long for a surgery at the clinic as they would for a hospital stay. If they pay, they get immediate surgery. The result is they either fork over lots of money, or worse, they delay or forgo having necessary surgery done.
Nurses and professionals of course want to work in these places because they are underpaid and working in deteriorating hospitals. Private clinics are state of the art, top of the line in cleanliness and professionalism – something our hospitals and staff used to be, because the money went there.
Eventually, OHIP will disappear and we will have private insurance – if you can afford it.
Gradually, Ford, our greedy business minded Premier, who has also decided to strip us of our beautiful Greenbelt for housing – for the RICH under the guise it is to alleviate homelessness (I ask you, who will be able to buy these homes, built on prime land, who, to begin with can’t even afford rent. Do you really believe those houses will be for low income???! Developers don ‘t build for poor people. Especially on choice land!)
We are on a slippery slope to the American health system. That is NO health system. Except if you are rich.
I predict that in two years, there will be little, if anything left of OHIP. And when other provinces see the money they too can make, all of Canada will follow suit.
Personally, I would rather pay more for my OHIP through my taxes each year, as do countries like Norway and Denmark, than to have to navigate and negotiate and beg for insurance and end up penniless and sick, or dead.
I ask you, what is government for? It is to PROTECT PEOPLE. It is suppose to be socialist. Get that through your heads. It suppose to be FOR the people, not for business, not for profit. The money is there. OUR MONEY. The government is NOT cash strapped. It is just full of greedy politicians not the least bit caring about us. They are not suppose to take advantage of situations for their own benefit. The government is not a corporation, not a private business. Our tax dollars are suppose to be used for US. For our health care, schooling, roads, police…don’t you understand that?
Beware. It does not end here. These type of politicians will come for our school system next.
We have a chance to vote this guy out in October. Let’s do it. Before we become the mess that the United States is.
I suggest you read Bernie Sanders book, It’s Okay to be Angry about Capitalism, and see how little the Americans have compared to us, and where we are heading.
I think one of the possibly many reasons companies don’t hire seniors is this.
They are wise.
They are wise to all the tricks and manipulations bosses try to pull to make their employees work longer and harder for less, and all manner of degrading and belittling mind games that reduce employees to begging slaves.
Senior employees are not there to climb the ladder, so they don’t play those games. They’ve been there and done that a hundred times.
I think bosses are more interested in their own power than the good of the company.
Their loss.
As a youngster I had a series of crappy jobs that prepared me to be a wonderful adult!
One such disappointing job was a short lived stint delivering newspapers when I was about 12. Getting up early was hard enough, I was a night owl, dawn and I were strangers. But there was something more sinister, that in my opinion was too much for a kid to bear. And that was collecting fees.
Yep. I had to get people to pay for their newspaper subscriptions. I had a little notebook that kept tabs and I had to confront some very disagreeable persons to pay up. Some were chronic offenders and wouldn’t answer the door. When they stopped getting a newspaper because of that, they’d be openly hostile towards me (it was a small, tight knit neighbourhood. Everyone knew me). To compound the affair, the newspaper itself would withhold paying me until I collected these debts. I hated this. Feared it. Truthfully, that was too great of a burden to put on a twelve year old.
The breaking point came one day, but not due to delinquent accounts.
One of the homes I delivered to was none other than one of the newspaper’s editors. He was a surly, royal sourpuss and fortunately, never awake when I delivered his paper. Except this one particular morning I was late, things happened to delay me and I was upset about it and freaking out. I hated being late for any thing and I knew people were counting on me to get their morning paper to them! Anyhow, I was late and he was awake and mad as wasps in smashed wasp nest! When I got to his door, he threw a tantrum and yelled and berated me for a good ten minutes.
I quit right on the spot.
But I shook for days.
That newspaper is now defunct.
It is a long time ago now, but I remember this photograph well.
At the time this was taken, I was an avid photographer, to say the least. I took pictures of everything, and in return, people took many pictures of me, perhaps in revenge! I made photo albums, those horrid self stick pages, good grief! And I would add captions that proved to be, sometimes, unpopular.
The above, with that caption, set me up for mockery.
At the time I was stunned by the backlash, because I was in no way trying to be pretentious, at that age, I didn’t even know what that meant. I was just simply stating a fact. Sure, I had lots of creative interests that I wanted to pursue, but I was a writer first and foremost and I didn’t doubt myself at all. I never questioned it. It was an activity I did every single day. I wrote hundreds of stories. I thought everyone else knew who they were too and should just say so.
Yep. Pretty pretentious!
That was the day I started shrinking from who I am. Over time, my real self was nearly totally eroded by the well meaning and maybe not so well meaning direction of others. As a result, I was miserable most of my adult life. I never successfully integrated into any field of endeavour, failed at every employ and relationship I had, and was LOST.
If you can remember who you are, live it. It is not that it is never too late, but why spend any of your precious time and life trying to be something you are not. My adult life was just one big embarrassment because I was a jagged square peg trying to fit into round holes.
Many years ago in a job interview I was asked a question that pops up into my mind time to time. It demands I reexamine it.
It was a silly, but very dark question.
What makes this question very interesting is that this was for a job as church secretary.
“If the bathroom is consistently without paper towels, how would you reprimand the janitor?”
I was struck by the word reprimand. Coming from senior members of a church, concerning a fellow employee, it seemed, to put it mildly, quite harsh. Especially about paper towels.
At the time I remember saying that it was not my responsibility to reprimand another employee. In my eyes, I was not superior to the Janitor. I distinctly remember looking right at the Pastor when I said it. His mouth dropped open. The two others put their noses to their notes.
I said I would try to find other solutions to the problem, but they did not want to know what. They wanted me to slap this guy!
I would try to find out why the bathroom is without paper towels and not automatically assume it was the janitors fault. Then I would work out a solution with him, not berate the poor soul. Nor would I automatically go to his superiors. I mean really, paper towels?
In hindsight, it was not in my best interest to challenge a potential employer.
Over the years this same question keeps haunting me. I think because they did not want solutions, and that kind of irritates me.
They wanted a bad ass authoritarian who could absolve them of their responsibilities.
That whole interview was fraught with questions, probing for answers to current problems they were struggling with and weren’t solving because they lacked leadership. The place was rife with gossip and backstabbing. They interviewed me several times, they couldn’t make up their minds. In the end they said they wanted someone younger but with my experience.
Pursuing higher education is not just about getting a better job or better pay, although, yes, it often does result in that.
It is not about the nice piece of paper you get to frame and hang on your wall or pull out when doubting Thomas’s say you couldn’t have possibly got a degree.
And it is not just about creating more opportunities, but yes, many more doors open.
Education is also not only courses, textbooks, certificates and honours.
And it is certainly more, way more, and should be more, than rote memorization of stuff.
It should be mind expanding.
I have met plenty of pretty stupid PhD’s. I mean, really stupid. They are not even good at what they doctored in. Narrow minded idiots who haven’t a lick of common sense. Or worse, snobs who like to smear their qualifications in your face like plate full of pooh with absolutely nothing to back up their claims of superiority.
Education, in its highest form is three fold. Experiences, critical thinking and doing what you love.
Experiences – You need to do things, try things, explore. Move outside your comfort zone. Be open. Learn from them.
Critical thinking – Oh, my, how badly we need thinking people! We have enough sheep. Enough cults. Enough celebrity worship. Ritual religion. People are asleep. The world has major big huge gigantic life threatening problems that need thinkers, solvers and doers! Not more idiots who give us more telephones, cars and jettison more crap into space hoping to colonize an inhospitable planet, professing to be geniuses because they are billionaires (oh there I go on an old rant!)
Do what you love – We already have a shit load of compassionless youngsters who became doctors and lawyers because of the money, man! When you pursue what you love, it’s like baking a cake with real butter and sugar. Becoming something just for money is trying to make delectable chocolate cake with only flour and water. Blah.
End of rant.
Over the 2020 Christmas holidays I sprained my foot and had to dust off some crutches I got several years ago. Many times I thought I should get rid of those crutches, but was awfully glad I hadn’t.
It was a memorable Christmas, as was most of 2020, not in a totally good way, as my bathtub was also backed up from December 22nd into the New Year, as no one wants to come and deal with that during the holidays. Sigh. So I took a shower and afterwards, sat on the toilet and bailed my bath water from tub to sink. Picture that.
2020 had it all man.
Anyhow.
As I hobbled around my house, I remembered my ill fated introduction to these crutches.
They are beautiful, extremely light weight aluminum, as light as a feather. But crutches, I have discovered, could weigh 500 pounds, because it is not so much the weight of them to consider, as the effort required to use them to propel yourself.
In my infinite wisdom, I decided to use them one day at work, replacing the cane I normally employ for a hurt leg. Typical me, whatever works in a small situation is bound to work in a grander circumstance. So just shuffling from my office chair to the bathroom a couple of times convinced me I could do greater things.
I launched myself to the library at lunch, because when I was well I had no trouble going the few blocks there, a mere 5 to 10 minute walk. I swung merrily along like those mechanical monkeys on bars I’d seen as a kid.
When I got to the library, I had one of those moments where I was sure I was about to die.
I collapsed on the nearest bench in the foyer, sweat bursting from my every pore, my heart pounding like tribal drums. I desperately needed to lie down on the floor and wanted to moan, loudly, like those professional wailers at funerals. All I could do was put my face in my hands and cry.
Using crutches demands that you be in some kind of decent physical shape before you try to go miles with them. The physical exertion is unbelievable!
At least I forgot about my hurt leg for a while.
And, I still had to go back to work. How the hell was I going to carry library books anyhow? Duh! I was just so enthusiastic about going to the place I love.
I opted to drag my poor leg back to the office and carry the darn crutches.