Gloria Estefan came up on my shuffle one day this month and it brought back memories of my childhood. I have memories of listening to her music in the late 80s, early 90s on KBC. Coincidentally on that very same day, I saw a school bus belonging to the primary school I went to and of course I started reminiscing about childhood and the innocence of it all. Because I can tell you when I was listening to this music and going to school, I could not have imagined that adulthood would be this big nonsense.
Capitalism keeps us wanting more and more and instead of working towards making this world better, we are working to survive it. And the thing is, that is what we learn even as children - how to survive. We aren’t even given a chance to imagine a better world because we are busy trying to survive this one and one of the ways we do is striving to make more money because it is seen that those with are living a “good life”.
I think, especially since we continue to have “future generations”, we must desire to make the world better for them and others. It is obvious that we aren’t because look….WTF is this????
No one can convince me:
That the world is getting better.
That majority of people are working to make it better.
That change is possible without an overhaul/revolution/change in the system.
That capitalism will somehow find a way to make things better.
Listen, even the music that is considered popular most of the time finds ways to keep us dissatisfied, shame us or is trying to sell us something. At every blady turn, someone is trying to sell us something. And I, for one, am tired.
Let me ask, in as much as you can, with the weight of capitalism - do you live life on your own terms?
I have been listening to Finding Your Way, the Prentis Hemphill podcast and I think it is quite brilliant. One of the things that made me pause was in Episode 6 when they talk about anger and experiencing anger as opposed to reacting to anger. They said that we should metabolize anger and I am not going to try and explain here but this is a recommendation to listen to the podcast and if not, that episode.
Related: how do you cultivate hope? I am genuinely asking because I do not know how to.
This song makes my heart feel warm. It is so beautiful.