Matters of the Heart

Two days ago, at 9:58 in the morning, I stood just outside the security gates at Heathrow Terminal 5. She walked away from me, her face wet with tears. "I love you too," she said, before scanning her ticket and then walked through the barriers beyond which I could not go.

She looked back once, before disappearing behind frosted glass, possibly forever out of my sight.

I didn't know what to do next. I stood clutching the small brown paper bag she had given me, in it a final letter and some parting gifts, and cast around like a lost dog. Maybe a part of me was waiting for her to come back through those gates. For what though? One final hug? A teary eyed reconciliation? I don't know.

Two days ago, my girlfriend of two years and I broke up.

Yesterday, after leaving work, I got on the tube to go home. I was supposed to change off the Victoria line at Warren Street, but, for the last two weeks, I had been living with her in a flat at Blackhorse Road. So, out of habit I suppose, I stayed on the line until Finsbury Park, 4 stops further than I was supposed to, where I realised my mistake, inviting the pain to assault me afresh.

Breaking up isn't easy, and whilst I can't consider this my first break up, I strongly suspect in the due course of time I will consider this the worst.

Her ghost haunts me through the days, and the lack of her by my side makes it hard to sleep at night. Everything reminds me of her. I walk to work, and past Russell & Bromley, where I once bought her a pair of heels, on the streets near Oxford Circus, where we have trodden over so many times before hand in hand. I walk into the office and past the Foosball table, where all the games we've played she has won. I go home and there is the living room of my parents house, where I first told her I loved her. The shower, where we first showered together. My small single bed, where we spent happy nights nuzzled together in a pile.

It comes in waves, and I feel like I'm always struggling to stay afloat. Just when I feel stable, like I've caught a breath, I'll remember something, see something, smell something and the memories will come crashing down on me so powerfully that I have to stop what I am doing and struggle through it.

We haven't talked since she arrived in Beijing and let me know she had arrived safely.

It's only been two days, yet I desperately want to get in touch with her, but all the words I want to say to her are just words that will make it hurt more for the both of us. "I miss you." "I love you." "I want to hold you." So, I stop myself. It's funny how quickly things change. Just last week, this would have been a routine thing, but then, just last week she was still my girlfriend.

I wonder how she is, if she's struggling just as much as me. There was no acrimony in our break up, so I can only guess that she feels as bad as me, which makes me hurt all the more.

We ended it for good reasons, or so we think. It was perhaps the best possible break-up, the most amicable break-up that two people who still so obviously love each other could have had, and, we both knew it was coming, so it wasn't like we weren't prepared. But, that was a source of pain in itself.

Just as at the start of our relationship, I eagerly counted all the firsts - the first date, the first hand holding, the first kiss, the first "I love you's", the first holiday,  the first birthday, the first anniversary...towards the end, my mind was ineluctably drawn to the lasts. Our last holiday, the last time we cooked together, the last time of making love, the last night sleeping together, the last time holding her, the last kiss, the last words, the last time seeing her face.

In some ways, I suppose there is a relief in it being over - the relentless assault of "lasts" is over. The page has been flipped, and all I must do now is focus on writing this new chapter with as much grace and dignity as I can muster. But, I still feel like we had so much more to share together, so much joy to experience together, more arguments to be had, more laughter, more of everything. I feel like I had so much left to give to her, and now there is nothing.

But, I suppose this is life. The pain of this heartbreak lets me know how much I cared, lets me know just how blessed I was to have her in my life for as long as I did, it lets me know that I'm very much alive. Without this pain, how would you know to cherish joy?

Today, I changed at Warren Street as I had planned. I didn't want to though. I wanted to be able to ride it all the way to Blackhorse Road, to walk up those streets, past Hookers Lane (we always joked about that), past the makers yard, into the block of flats, up the lift to the 3rd floor and knock on number 46, and find her waiting there.

One step at a time, I suppose. One step at a time.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Can we share the pie better please?

I turned 26 recently - less than a week ago in fact.

It's a significant age because now, no matter how I try to pervert mathematics, there is no getting around the fact that I am closer to 30 than 20, and so, perhaps in recognition (or resignation) that I'm well on my way to being an Adult(tm), I decided to get involved and vote in the general election this year.

Naturally, It wouldn't be enough to pick at random from the four selections I would have (I say four, because to a 2nd generation immigrant UKIP is as much of a choice as eating dirt is, but I digress), I would have to do a bit of research to understand what all this political hoo-ha was all about.

I discovered many things during this research - for instance - that my political beliefs align quite left of the spectrum, with a fairly liberal outlook (you can figure yours out here if interested: https://www.politicalcompass.org/test), but really what I felt most strongly about out of all the myriad of topics involved in the socio-political landscape of our modern society is income inequality.

By whichever metric you want to measure it, we are very unequal. I provide just one example (from this illuminating series of graphs on The Atlantic).

To summarise: One line is a lot steeper than the others. This is bad.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that inequality in itself is bad. I understand we live in a capitalist system; an economic system where wealth creation is founded on the principle that by making the pie bigger, everyone gets a bigger share and that incentives in the form of possible massive wealth are required for people to take the requisite risks in innovating, setting up businesses and doing all the other good shizzle that have provided our society with all of the amenities that we enjoy today. However, not all inequality is equal.

On a side note - the capitalist system seems to be right now the best economic system we've implemented to date, however, it won't be the last. The capitalist system is founded on the assumption that growth can be sustained infinitely. This is obviously ridiculous, but I believe that it's not really something we as a society have had to contend with up till now. Earth is a finite resource. This by definition means that capitalism is not going to be a suitable economic system for the end-state - where presumably we will be exploiting all of Earth's resources, but doing so in a sustainable way (because there is no other way to do so and ensure the continued survival of the human race).

I'm not here to lay out the "how did we get here's" or to debate about the "how can we fix this", because I am not educated enough to know the history, and not knowledgeable enough to come up with any credible solutions.

But in the light of the election results in the UK, it seems that we are going to continue down the road where we've come from, which makes me think that the graphs above are not going to get better anytime soon, and I think that's super bad. It makes me wonder whether I'm missing something, or whether other people are missing something. 

Sure, keeping the NHS free is all well and good, and trying to aid people in buying homes is also great, but I can't help but feel that ultimately these problems are partly caused by the fact that inequality has grown so large - if perhaps not so much money was tied up in the financial markets and stock portfolios and instead being paid to the people in salary, wouldn't we all spend more as a result, fuelling a virtuous cycle in the economy?

I didn't want this post to get too serious so here is a picture of a puppy and a kitten.

More income means more tax pounds - a source of funding for the NHS perhaps? More income might also make it more palatable to cut the benefits system too. More income might help people get on the housing ladder and finally, more income would allow us all to participate in society more fully. Culture costs money. Art costs money. Having more money means more of both.

More than the monetary aspect though, I think there's another important reason why the amount of inequality we see today is bad.

The part of me that is jealous of the fact that I'm not a multi-million net worth individual would argue that well - I work hard at my job, as do many other people, is it really fair that the compensation levels should differ so much even though no less effort is being expended? Although this visceral reaction probably echoes many people's, it is hardly a convincing argument. 

No. The real reason comes from a more pragmatic perspective.

In a society like ours, there will always be inequality. It is ingrained in the system and necessary for the system to function. However, the aspirational culture we all participate in let us all think that we'll be in a position to reach the stars when this is perhaps the very opposite of the truth. We turn a blind eye to the fact that even if there were perfect social mobility, we would still be arranged in a pyramid structure much like we are now. Some people would be at the metaphorical "top" - the CEOs, the entrepreneurs and so forth, others would be in the middle class and we would still have to have people doing the low skilled jobs at the bottom.

The problem really is that we think of it as a "top" or a "bottom" at all. All are necessary for the functioning of this society, and as sad as it may to be admit, it might not be wrong to say that the reason we value a CEO (in terms of pay) much more than a janitor is simply because he will have a much bigger impact on a shareholder's expected earnings. But, unfortunately, more than that, because really monetary value is representative of just "value", when we pay minimum wage to a cleaner such that they are not able to participate as much as they would like in society, we are not only facilitating a wealth of economic problems, but also telling them that they are "just" a cleaner. What CEO would think of themselves in all seriousness as "just" the CEO? 

As the recent tube strike showed, just because we take something for granted doesn't mean it's not important, and just because we can all do a job it doesn't render it without value - because - well, it still needs to be done.

Second picture break! This is how I eat a bacon sandwich too. Problem?

I want to close out by using an analogy from the days of my yore, when I used to be heavily into video games. Back in the days of World of Warcraft, we would get together, a bunch of people 40 strong, to try and slay dragons (and other ghastly world threatening entities). In that group, two of the most prestigious positions were the main tank and the main healer, why? If the main tank (who held the dragon's attention and took the brunt of the dragon's ire) died, then it was a given that the attempt would probably fail. If the main healer died, the main tank would probably die as a result. 

So, raids far and wide recruited for the best, most talented players they could find to fill these spots, even though measuring the performance between one tank/healer or the other was sometimes a fairly subjective thing. The rest of the riff-raff, the damage dealers, were pretty much interchangeable. Do you stab the dragon with a dagger or fire arrows or frost-bolts at it? Whatever, it doesn't matter, just do your thing (but don't stand in the fire).

My own raiding guild followed this philosophy too, and, you know, we made a pretty good raid. For a long time we were the 2nd best on our server (and then even the first best for a time too!). But, what kept us from reaching the big leagues, from becoming great? The answer, it turned out in the end, was the quality of our damage dealers. 

Although individually the job they did was not flashy or noticeable - and there was no immediate visible feedback for their efforts (such as the tank living or dying), the small accumulation of improvements to each of their damage outputs in the end yielded a big difference. 

It was the difference between taking 10 minutes to kill a dragon versus 5 minutes, mitigating 5 minutes worth of risk for the raid - 5 minutes of the main tank being bitten and clawed at, 5 minutes of the main healer concentrating without blinking on each sudden movement in the health of the main tank, 5 minutes of the raid having to avoid the fire. 

It was what turned a good raid into a great raid.

We have in our society now, a good raid. 

We have strong corporations who make great products and a robust government. They are the ones in the news and the spotlights, the main tanks and the main healers. We of course want the best, and so we are paying out of our noses for the best of the 1%. However though, this means the people who crank the handles of industry, the damage dealers, are not being empowered enough. 

So maybe, just maybe, if we focused a little more on giving more attention to the people and a little less to the top, we could turn a good raid into a better one. We could turn a good society into a better one.

A good morning indeed.

I stepped out of the tube station into the chill morning air.

A man giving away TimeOut magazines stepped forward from where he was waiting on the edge of the pavement for the latest batch of commuters to shuffle out of the underground.

He was not like the others - blank faces and bored eyes. Perhaps he was new on the job, not yet dulled by the dull affair of peddling his wares.

"Good morning!" He exclaimed, words as cheery as his smile. "Time Out magazine anyone?"

I didn't take one, and neither was I in a bad mood in need of cheering up, but cheer me up he did.

I hope he realises that for that moment, in that instant, he wasn't just handing out magazines. Keep it up, TimeOut man.