I have never done anything truly on my own, and I don’t believe you have either. When I walk home from work, I walk on pavement laid out by hands unseen, I stop at the traffic lights where the drivers wait for me, I walk through the park with grass green from watering. While I walk, I can’t help but feel grateful for everyone who went before me, who made it possible. Like a path through a field that started with only one set of feet but has been compounded by years of others following. The world we live in demands reliance on others, although it likes to think otherwise.
Individualism is surely a weed growing in a vegetable patch; it is the approach of competition for resources, whether that be light and water or a seat on the tube. I used to think that I wanted to live alone. I imagined the bliss of coming home and knowing everything was where I left it. I luxuriated in the dream of sitting on my sofa, sipping my cup of tea, watching my favourite show or reading my book uninterrupted. I would love to know that the shower is always free, anytime I want it. But thinking like that is with the mindset that other people get in your way. That they are obstacles to move around rather than a community where others are not hurdles but blessings. When I prioritise my need to shower over someone else’s, I forget that the whole is as important as the one. I forget that it is far warmer when things are ours and not just mine.
I need other people in ways that are too minuscule and all-pervading to land on. I need to hear my flatmate coughing behind the wall to feel less alone, I need their hair to pull out of the shower drain for my sense of community, I need to hear their plans for the week to know that life still exists when I close my eyes. I need them to be there when I have good or bad news, and I need to be there for their news too. I need to give and receive in a structure that is horizontal and flowing rather than transactional with myself as the sun. I need to exchange always, and to be reliant on other people, and let them be reliant on me. I need to feel like I am living in a web.
I think of emperor penguins huddling together for warmth in the Antarctic. Or even closer to home, bees. Bees collect nectar from the flowers that offer them, and they pollinate the flowers in return. The bees bring the nectar back to their hives to feed the colony, and the pollinated flowers fruit. The fruit feeds the animals, and the animals help spread the seed. It sounds obvious and natural. I suppose the issue arises when bees feel the scarcity of pollinating flowers. Some bees may feel they are more entitled to pollen than others. But we cannot pit the bees’ need for pollen against one another. Perhaps the bees should question why there is an institutional lack of pollen in the first place.
If the world is ‘every man for himself’, then let it be that in full force. Let the shops close, let no one fix the potholes or the power lines. Let the hospitals stand empty, their lights flickering, because no doctor stayed late and no cleaner came in. Let rubbish fill the streets that our uneducated children play in, because no one cares to teach them. Let the lonely be forever lonely, leave the sick to perish before their time, give no mind to the suicidal tendencies of the grieving. Let the weak die and let the strong be abhorred when they realise that they too are weak. The future of caring too much for yourself and not at all for others is bleak and has few survivors—fat and happy though they may be.
We cannot do without the trees and the grass and the spiders that stop our world being overrun with flies. I need the postman just as much as I need my own sister sometimes. I need the woman who smiled at me in the GP and rolled her eyes because they were running late. So, the next time I get a letter, or cross a road with a lollipop person, or speak to a stranger, I will remember that they have provided for me in a way that exceeds what I can imagine. They have met some need of mine, tangible or emotional, that I didn’t know needed to be met. When I breathe in, I’ll thank the trees for their hard work and think of the surgeons that pruned them. As I put on my jeans, I’ll consider the hands that threaded their seams. I’ll pull the weed out from the root and let the veg patch flourish. If I come home and someone is in the shower, I shall know that having people to share a shower with is a blessing, and I am lucky to wait for it.
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That’s all this time. Leave a comment with your thoughts! Goodbye for now (◕‿◕)♡
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