Poverty anywhere is poverty everywhere

Poverty anywhere
is poverty everywhere.*

Why is that? Why are other people’s problems my problems? Are we all together in this? How can we be together in this if I don’t know who they are, why are we here? If I can’t feel them as I can feel my body. Do my toenails know about my hair? Do my fingers know about my heart?

Somewhere I read: I often wonder if life is easier for other people or if they are better at faking it.

I get to the outskirts of the city and I see all those buildings, and it’s not the big sprawling of tiny houses that bothers me, it’s the big, huge buildings and the tiny flickering lights that make me think of ants, and working bees, and insignificant little lives, with anonymous problems. I just can’t tell if I’m scared because I know that deep down, I’m just one more working bee, in the middle of its working life. Dead and forgotten already, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I’m scared for all those little bee people I imagine, living in horrible places that I’ll never see, but that I can sort of imagine, because they are in a way, just like mine. With that weird kitchen smell that kitchens other than your own have. With their children and their laundry and their skid marks in the WC. With their fights and flat screens and unpaid bills and salary rises and sudden unemployment. Why do I care about them? Why won’t they ever know that I am here, trying to imagine who they are?

* Sounds revolutionary? James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, said that in 2002.

Photos: Noktonmagazine.com