EARNEST MEN WORK SO THE WICKED MAY EARN

While the world is a discouraging place to live in, because for as much as it has to offer is as much as it has to take and perhaps we can make this an argument of perception or perhaps a cold truth. Both are okay.

The world is discouraging because it wakes up at sunsets to shake hands with despair and promise a continued day of suffering for those that already have it hard. It does not care for equality or fairness or for balance. The problems and ill that exists under the sun is merely because we are all victims of what could be an intriguing social experiment – in a dog eats dog world, there is no time to be considerate of anyone else but self. It is for this very reason that the gardener will steal from his master and that the hard worker will resent life. As the world is already unkind, one would presume that there would at least be a reward for the earnest, perhaps as hope that better days exist and that with trying hard enough is contempt at the end of the tunnel.

The reality is far more different when you look at things from the back of the room, out of self and carrying buckets of compassion to understand the life of the individual. For the man that starts off their work day at 8pm and leaves the office at 5pm in their car, to stop at woolies for a few groceries and proceed to a clean 2-bedroom house, life is rather challenging in its mishaps until they face away from the mirror. Away from the mirror is the unfortunate realisation that no one has it easy, there is a man fighting through a cold winter to get to work by 6am only to be ruminated a measly E1 500 in an economy that can barely buy toiletries for the same amount.

Desperate

There is someone suffocating in public transport in desperate need to get to work on time so they do not have to miss out on the hour pay. There is an individual that wakes up to the stench of a urine bucket that needs to be spilt. For the man living life in struggle and that struggle being all they know speaks of how the world is simply unkind and not unfaithful. The life of the man in a two-bedroom house sounds like a dream come true. It is better than the loud sound of desperation at 6am in industrial areas from the many people that once had dreams to be so much more.

There is only a minority that wake up and get to live life as a testimony of ease and luxury, while the rest of the world struggles at the mercy to survive for the minority. The textbook has successfully minimised this to merely a socio-economic issue that can only be explained by history. However, it fails to acknowledge and understand the psychological landscape of this and as a result, we continue to suffocate amidst the idea that we must be okay with suffering. Here, the wicked and the earnest both suffer the same for different atrocities, the burdens of the thief will not spare the earnest man selling maize because of the imbalance that slices through the thickness of this social injustice.

Struggle

Many families live an honest life and still struggle as much as those that fail to be earnest, and this realisation is nothing more than a reminder of how easy it is to resent hard work, because those who bear its fruits are not the ones benefiting from it. In actual fact, the amount of hard work you see when you walk in town as the sun begins to set will make you resent life because it should not be common for many people to work so hard, in extreme situations and weather and still struggle because there is no reward for the amount of work put in to live.

Perhaps somewhere in between the disappointing nuance of life. There is still so much to live for, perhaps in ways that do not meet the standard of society and that should be okay, because the best shot you have is to be audacious, to fearlessly take up room whenever an opportunity arises. Perhaps the story will begin to change and the world will be far less disappointing.

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