3 Walls and a Roof

It’s been a hard week. Regular readers of my blog and anyone who’s just joined and cares to look will know I had a friend die a week ago. My last post was my initial expression of grief. What’s happened since has brought the healing tears needed for the wounds grief creates to heal. The number of flowers that have been placed in the doorway he occupied at the end of his life just keeps growing. But grieving forever is as unhealthy as not grieving at all. The ones that cared and who are also grieving are gathering next Saturday. Together we will decide when to clear the flowers and other tokens of remembrance from the doorway. It’s a shop doorway not a graveyard it’s not appropriate to have flowers left there forever.

Life does go on. That’s the thing with life it is so strong and powerful it beats death every time. All you have to do is find the courage to choose it. To be honest it’s not that long ago, relatively speaking, that I chose something other than life repeatedly. I was so used to not choosing life the other things I turned to trapped me until I was no longer free to choose. I was a slave, I was used to being a slave, that didn’t mean that slavery was ok it was just what I’d been used to all my life. It was the most terrifying and risky thing I’ve ever done breaking free from my slavery.

You see slavery can be comfortable and yes if we’re honest most of us are slaves to something or lots of things. In the course of my attempts to break free from slavery I’ve slipped back into different types of slavery. It takes guts to break away from a slave master, I in no way judge or critise anyone who decides they can’t break away from a slave master, I know how scary and dangerous it can be. I’ve just felt the knot in my stomach the edge of cliff head spinning feeling that comes just before a breaking free action, as I logged out of a social media account and uninstalled the app on my phone. I have no idea what the password was I used so I can’t log back in and you know something the sense of relief is great. There were a lot of shouty people connected to that account, I’ve got a bit of my life back.

It’s all a matter of perspective you see. I’d unwittingly sold myself into the ownership of a social media account. Instead of sticking to the social media platform that suits me as a slave master I tried to be a slave to 2 masters. It just doesn’t work and my main slave master, Life, seems to be smiling on me again. Please don’t judge me for being a slave to life I just haven’t got any intention of breaking free from this slavery.

Thing with slavery and most of us are slaves, to be honest we are all slaves to something. Unfortunately not all slave masters treat their slaves the same. Which means some people are treated differently and at times really badly as a direct result of who their master is. It’s not nice, fair, or kind but it happens, some slaves have more freedom to be themselves than others. Some are treated as incompetent, idiots who need to be constantly punished because their masters have drapetomania. I know how people with drapetomania slave masters suffer. I’m glad I have life as my master.

Which brings me on to the main point of this blog and the strange title. My main Slave Master, Life has issued me with a command, and I’m going to need to people to work with me to fulfill my masters orders. (Don’t say anything but I think Master Life wants more slaves.) Life has said use your brains and the skills you have, ask people to work with you and I’ll do the rest.

Well I’ve thought what can I do, didn’t have the faintest idea. Plus Death happened, didn’t tend my wounds properly, I keep telling Death I don’t want you as my Slave Master Life is my Master that’s who I belong to. You know how it is.

Anyway I suddenly remembered a chat I had with some people who support themselves by asking others in the street to support a charity. They were telling me about the work the charity does.

They told me about how the charity helped a village that had been devastated by a weather caused disaster, it had been trashed by wind and water. They were planning on building a well, roads, putting electricity in the works. Luckily they asked the village first what they needed. 3 Walls and a roof. WHAT you’ve just been hit by a horrendous storm the well is contaminated, the roads are impassable, you’ve no electricity! Three walls and a roof you see we’ve got one wall of our school and we need three more and a roof then we’ll have a school. Storms are always going to happen but if we have a school then we can teach our young people how to repair things after a storm and we won’t need the kind help of charities.

Hang in there I’ll tell you how this relates to my Master’s command which will be near impossible to achieve, Master Life wants the cage of society completely gone Master Life says a new nice society will replace it. (I think my master has gone a bit far with this one and my of lost the plot but don’t say this too loudly don’t want to make my Slave Master angry).

So first I’ve got to make sure I’ve fixed enough of the problems in myself to complete the task and hope that others will appear to work with me.

Here’s my plan:

1. I’m not going to sleep outside again, I’m in a backpackers hostel at moment.
2. I’m going to busk sing in the street to self fund my lodgings. Although this isn’t going to be enough long term.
3. I’m going to give up smoking. This one scares the hell out of me.

How the heck are we all going to change the cage we live in? Well you don’t have to but I chose Life it’s a good master but does make some impossible demands.