SUSTENANCE

The moon is a bal­loon, porc sen­glar may fly, the Earth is flat (there are some who gen­uinely be­lieve that to be true), and 2019 will see hu­man­ity pull out of its tail­spin.

Ecol­ogy, democ­racy, tol­er­ance and good­will are buried under ran­cour, abuse, de­struc­tion and brit­tle, some­times bru­tal, rule. How on Earth will that ever change de­spite the ma­jor­ity of us crav­ing it? Note I put the planet first, but they are all im­per­a­tives.

The news is grim whichever way I look. As I write the mulcher that is Brexit is run­ning at full tilt. Bit­ter­ness within the UK and its par­lia­ment is deep­en­ing by the day and we so-called ab­scon­ders on the con­ti­nent, the dis­en­fran­chised na­tion­als de­nied a vote on some­thing that fun­da­men­tally af­fects our lives, take the cred­i­ble world view that our coun­try is falling apart. It is deeply de­press­ing.

In other news…. I will leave Matthew and many more to de­fine bet­ter than I how hugely sig­nif­i­cant 2019 will be for Cat­alo­nia. But I say this. Con­tinue to keep your peace. This is among the great­est of all pow­ers.

Where is there hope? Close to home, as al­ways.

If life must be a bal­ance then how (pro­foundly in the case of the dis-United King­dom) can na­tional and in­ter­na­tional crises so out­weigh the local and tan­gi­ble, the mat­ters and peo­ple in our lives who con­sti­tute well­be­ing? There has been for such a long time an un­bear­able weight of dark news, more than enough to keep one awake at night, to cloud one’s con­scious­ness of what is real and im­me­di­ate, vital and sus­tain­ing. It is now an all-know­ing ex­is­tence, with­out depth or trust or de­cency. How can we cope? We are at dire risk of not doing so. We grow numb. Noth­ing is shock­ing. We weaken, morally and emo­tion­ally.

Damn it, I refuse. All that I re­sist, all of the above, un­der­score the im­per­a­tive se­cu­ri­ties of com­mu­nity and fam­ily, of time and nur­ture. They are not ex­pend­able, yet some na­tions have taken a sledge ham­mer to these cor­ner­stones of rea­son. If they are sta­ble, if all ages have a sense of be­long­ing, if there is that time, and there is a table, for a few or for hun­dreds, that peo­ple can share, with eye con­tact and with that nour­ish­ing sense of being vis­i­ble, heard, ap­pre­ci­ated, then we have an­other im­mense force for good­ness and hap­pi­ness.

Such con­text is also in­valu­able in recog­nis­ing our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties both to oth­ers and our planet, for there is noth­ing sus­tain­able about self, greed, iso­la­tion and in­tol­er­ance.

If I were to sug­gest that good food, shared and given time, is the an­swer to well­be­ing I know that Cata­lans will nod in agree­ment. True, too, within all Latin cul­tures and for sure it is rooted world­wide.

Where has the wis­dom been lost? In the stam­pede for pos­ses­sions and pro­file which can never, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, be in­clu­sive? Eco­nomic growth is only wor­thy if it does not di­min­ish well­be­ing.

So, pull up a chair. Let me offer you sus­te­nance.

Foot­note: As I write I am just 220 short of the nec­es­sary 10,000 pe­ti­tion votes needed to force the im­po­tent UK Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain why we EU-dwelling Brits – Eu­ro­peans - are per­sonae non gratae. I am not hold­ing my breath.

https://​petition.​parliament.​uk/ pe­ti­tions/228362