Random Luck in a Crisis
January 3, 2023
Happy New Year. For daishin and me, personally, it is, but not because of any virtue of our own, just luck. As i write these words, the temperature outside is below freezing, but our home is warm, even though we have not turned on the heat even once this winter. This flat, where we have lived since last May, is so well-insulated, and with several floors of neighbours below, that even in cold weather we are sometimes so warm we have to take off a layer of clothing, or turn back the duvet on our bed.
We have enough food. Neither of us is ill.
And, in this historical moment, the above means we are extraordinarily lucky.
We have friends and neighbours whose homes are freezing, and they cannot afford to heat them. People are having to choose between heating or eating. It is difficult to go out and find a warm public place if you cannot afford to wash your clothes.
In a Glasgow hospital, people have to wait for other people to die before they can get a bed.
In Glasgow, even if you are in your 80s and having a stroke, you cannot get an ambulance.
More than a third of adults in the UK would struggle to find an extra £20.
We are told that we are "post-Covid," no safety regulations are in place, and yet the "twindemic" is so severe that ambulances are rationing oxygen.
While grateful for our luck, daishin and i are sad and angry, because, for most of our society, luck is now all we can hope for.
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