Outsourced love

Many times, I need to use the subway or the bus in São Paulo, and this experience frustrates me greatly. Firstly because there is a high concentration of people, generally in closed, hot and confined spaces. Secondly, because it's mentally stressful to be a young person on public transportation because, even if there are seats marked different colours especially because of them being priority seats, very often I have seen young people occupy such seats and either blatantly ignore older people, or act like they are distracted and never see the person. This irritates me profoundly. Therefore, I try to take it upon myself to give my seat - if it is reserved or not for priority groups - but this means there is no such thing as an easy relaxed trip even if I am sitting. I remember laughing very much when I tried to offer my seat to an old asian man in the subway, but he kindly shook his head and pointed to the seat he was standing beside - a priority seat, occupied by a young man that had not given up his seat. The asian grampa smiled and waited patiently until this young man gave up his seat. Eventually, the young man gave up and gave his seat and the grampa gave me a huge smile as he sat again, and we silently shared a laugh. However, the fact that this type of thing happens is only symptomatic of a social condition which is a whole lot worse.

While in many cultures people who are older are respected and cared for, the western culture has little to show in this regard. It is somewhat a despairing thought to imagine one's self perhaps becoming older in this society that ceases to give value to those who cease to be productive. Once a person has reached a certain point in which they do not work, earn or produce, it is like they are no longer necessary and are essentially waiting for their last years to pass by and are little more than an annoyance to much of society. 

Especially in big cities, it is a very lonely place to be of age. There are little to no activities the person can do alone - not even go for a walk or buy something they need - and so they are trapped within the place where they reside. Very few older people are able to live their entire lives alone, and when they need care, they are sent to a home because any sons and daughters have to 'get on with their lives'. There is no time to stop for the other. It is better for people to pay for others to care of their parents than it is to do it one's self. 

This is not something unique to the treatment of old people, but also of children. I came from a culture in which when I went to visit my friends in their houses, I never met their mothers - I met only their nannies. The mothers were always working. 

Although at times this is a necessity due to a financial condition, many times the money the mother earns at work is entirely spent on the nanny and the housekeeper that are artificially playing the role of a mother, but without the emotional bond or freedom to discipline. Children are raised by creches, schools, television and internet because at some point women saw that those who were recognised most in society, were those that were part of the machine of production and profit, allied to the feeling of need of independence, we have entered the workforce. I am not against this - this has saved may women from abusive relationships, and even my own mother worked throughout my childhood in a part-time job for us to manage to make ends meet financially, but she put a great deal of effort into being able to juggle all this. But what I many times see is that, many men were initially wrong in not taking up any role whatsoever in parenting and women, rather than bringing this forward to such an extent that they should fulfil this duty, women started to do the same thing as men: If working out of the house means I do not have to care for a child, then I will do so too! And in this sense "equal rights" ends up becoming something more like "equal wrongs" - and so children have been the ones who have suffered the blow of not having an identity within a family and have outsourced parenting. 

These children are now growing up. These children have never been taught to build relationships. These children have no idea who in the world they are if not doing what they saw their parents doing all their lives: working. 

We have come to the point that the question that follows "What is your name?" is "What do you do?" and the answer to what we do is our job description, because that is what ultimately we do. We do not love, laugh, spend time with our ageing parents, listen to the stories of our grandparents - what we do is our job, the rest fits around the corners. What we do is give profit to a company, what we do is we research for the desperately corrupt pharmaceutical companies that leave aside treatment that cures to be able to continue selling (and profiting) with treating symptoms, rather than solving underlying causes. What we do is we teach classrooms full of students whose names we may never know for them too to be part of this system, and will use the tools handed to them in university or school to neglect those they love. 

Of course, this seems a very pessimistic view of the world. There are many good things one can do with work, and we were commanded to work by God in Genesis - work in itself is not the problem, but the fact that it scales up the list of priorities silently and swiftly knocking down other people and things that should not be below it. 

Before work was mentioned by God, relationships were established. Reading Genesis 1 and 2, God did work to make all of Creation, but he worked so that these relationships could be established and thrive: the relationship of God and man, of man and nature and men amongst themselves. The entire basis of the system God elaborated and constructed to work harmoniously is relationships. However, it is becoming progressively more normal to entirely eliminate this aspect of life in favour of shallow relationships to give space to work. We have ceased working to survive, and we are now surviving to work. 

Our lives become empty of meaning, and we feel we lack in value when we cease to be productive. I have just spent the last 4 months away from working and studying, and I honestly was almost driven to madness because it was like I "had" to work, produce and do something to be useful to the world and not a waste of space. Instead, God answered every time I was frustrated about this by reminding me that the significance that I invested in and could achieve in this time not working was far greater away from salaries or lab countertops. It was in the home, nurturing relationships, spending time with my family, listening to my grandmother's missionary stories, writing letters and visiting people I love, or even doing things for loved ones though they were far. 

And, in fact, ultimately, it is through these relationships that we find our true meaning. I have found how out of practice I was for the art of being idle, and just how very draining and even much more challenging it is to build such meaningful relationships. It is much easier to slice tissue, follow an immunohistochemistry protocol or plot data than it is to yield to another person's will, to be silent when you disagree, to be patient when you are tired. We may be PhDs for a great deal of things, but we are barely in primary school when it comes to being a sibling, friend or parent. 

At the end of the day, with our fancy jobs, diplomas and all that money can buy, we are still miserable people. A great deal of the population suffers from depression, addiction, and multiple other disorders. We are fearful, and though we have never been so many, we have never been so alone. We seek love and approval in ways money can buy - because even with all this money, we still are not happy or fulfilled. But we can't fix it. Not by money, science or cleverness. 

The only logical way to start fixing it is going back to when things were actually working for work and relationships, in Genesis: Reestablishing the first relationship, of God and man. This is where the necessary healing begins such that from there. Christ came to reconcile in himself all things, and through him the relationships broken by beliefs that our value is in producing rather than in Christ dying for our sins can be mended. Hearts and minds wounded by a lonely society and an inhuman profit machine can be truly healed. We can perhaps then describe ourselves not anymore as engineers, scientists or psychologists - but as mothers, daughters, sons, fathers and friends. And this will have more value than any imaginable number of digits of a salary.