Playing Hookey

I love days like this, despite the lessening guilt of not being at work where I am paid to be.

I sit and write and read and the world is peaceful in my home with the dog on her bed, asleep next to her favourite rubber toy.

I know there is a huge part of me that needs this. This being alone and free to just entertain my own private thoughts about life and world. And my putting it down somewhere, even if it is just for an audience of one.

There is a lot in this world to be unhappy about. My mother thinks I am an unhappy person. I don't think I am. I am grateful. Grateful for the things I have, the places I've been and will go to, the people I know, the people who want to know me. But I am also scared. Scared of it all going away one day because of factors I cannot control, like politics and world leaders and nepotistic Prime Ministers.

So many people who are not even as huge misfits as I am in this place are already leaving or have left. The depths of their disgust with the stink in this country are so great they are willing to leave family, familiars and relatively comfortable lives to go elsewhere for the sake of a little more peace.

Are they running away? Is the good fight better fought on the war-torn turf? There are many who think so. Many who think the thing to do is stay and persevere and try and change things by fighting the system. But I also think that those who leave are fighting the battle. They have voted with their feet, putting the latter before their hearts. And I think it is time the country listened.

When someone takes a step away and flees, it is a signal often, of desperation. Of reaching a state where the person feels there is no other choice but to disengage. When a woman stops talking, it is because she is done. When a people flees its Motherland, it is because the Motherland no longer embraces them, or makes them feel like it is enough of a home for their spirits.

When a people turns its back on its own soil, it cannot be mistaken for anything other than what it is - a sign of pure, unadulterated distress. Distress with the knowledge that even they, those who have strongest legal and constitutional claim to the land, no longer buy into the Great National Dream. Distress with the understanding that they are now powerless to change things enough that a tolerable living standard would be reached in their lifetimes.

Yes, their lifetimes. For we are selfish, aren't we? In as much as religion teaches us patience, the limit of patience in most of us is our own life spans. If we cannot see things changing while we still live, the selfish in us will say, what's the point? Let someone else fight the battle in their own life time.