TEREZUM

There are days when the joy of having a warm bagel or a cheese pie is everything I need. I woke up today with a deep feeling of peace inside. I’ve heard the rain singing sweet comforting notes at the window. Feeling the urge to just go and sniff the fresh air I pondered about the hard life that men have and how being of a certain gender encompasses so many hardships. Women have it hard as well but I wonder if maybe we need to think more of how difficult the other has it in order to truly appreciate the Planet as it is right now: a more or less functional place where we strive to make everything happen.  

I think of the road building task: tedious, dirty, harsh. It can be raining or cold outside. I see men well over 50 doing this task. I ask myself: can their tired bones and spine keep it going at this pace? Most of them are smoking while trying to yell at one another, in the all consuming job of getting things done. A woman doing the same job would be brutal to watch. Yet these men have created roads, tunnels, buildings since the inception of the industrialized world. We can walk where we walk and go where we go because hoards of men risked and damaged their life by doing such endeavours. I often believe that compassion is not shown enough towards the masculine gender. We assume that every man is tough and that they take it all in with pride. I wonder how many of these hardworking men killed some of their dreams in order to take a bullet for the family or for the woman they want to provide for. Have we ever thought about that? 

I feel a deep sense of appreciation, respect, compassion and melancholy when I watch them at work. The tarmac. Such a simple thing. It is almost everywhere. You step on it the minute you walk out of the door and rush to go to work. I imagine a highly educated person driving in a luxurious car and maybe watching with contempt the workers inhaling the toxic fumes of the tar coating. But the very thing that made his travelling possible is the people he looks at with superiority. I am trying to think of a way how humans could be brought back to the essentials and appreciate this kind of small things that many of us take for granted. 

The life of a man working with his bare hands is not easy. Neither is the life of a man working with his mind. Musk or Bezos versus the anonymous heavy duty workers: who has it the hardest? We can’t compare and the only way to appreciate is through understanding. The only place where a man can have the hope of having a break and a respite is his home. His family. His wife. But too often the man sees himself in the position to sacrifice time for love, time for bonding, time for communication. We need more balance. I think that the rise of AI and robots could very well replace these sort of tedious dirty tasks in order to make room for humans to work something which is meaningful and allows them the dignity of having a choice. Many men and women who do the dirty jobs had no choice. Coming from empoverished backgrounds or lacking a nurturing guiding adult, they did what the had to do: survive.  

But we should always dream about more than just surviving. Our children need to see that life is more than a set of conditioned choices. And stepping each day onto tarmac with a pondering thought about what life is can be a starting point to introspection and the dream of something more.