Imagine Our Own Future Before Power Imagines One For Us

I feel like precisely because imagining the future which comes after this seems impossible, is the reason why we have to start imagining it. 

Otherwise the future we end up getting to live in we will have had no part in creating, and there are enough politicians and leaders of all kinds out there only too happy to design a future for everyone else to live in if it means they get to write the rules.

As difficult as it may seem, I feel like now is the perfect time for people to try and imagine what they want to happen after this, and seek out others who also share the same hopeful sentiment. Living in a future in which everyone has had a hand in making, no matter how small it may seem, is a really important thing in terms of having a sense of joint ownership about something everyone helped to build.

And that desire to seek out others who think and feel similarly to the way you are right now will be essential in order to galvanise people together into a cohesive whole, able to work as one. Because the only other option or road that springs easily to mind right now is one which leads to despair and total submission to the external forces that usher, steer and coerce us into doing what it thinks is best, if we choose not to do anything at all and remain stagnant.

That does sound proper dystopian, and even a bit hysterical when read in one go, but if you would have told me 2 months ago that very soon I would find myself staying in my house for 5 weeks straight in a bid to help save people's lives, then I would have mentioned that you didn't have to watch the entirety of Black Mirror in one sitting. 

But here we are! 

The truth of what's happening sounds just as wild as fiction right now, which is exactly why the way the story continues is so up for grabs. Everyone has writers block because the true extent of the reality we're in still remains unknown. Which is precisely why imagining a future that personally gives you hope is so necessary.

Intimidating Others Is A Privilege I Enjoy Making The Most Of

One of the best things about being big and black in an almost entirely white village I'm finding is the ability to intimidate strangers without having to try. It really is a blessed privilege!

It's been so nice to have people quaking in abject fear when I've walked into a beer garden and taken a pew with my pint at the picnic bench next to them, and then bathed myself in the waves of worrisome gazes coming in from all angles, as they scope me out, attempting to divine my ulterior motive for choosing that particular bench to plonk my arse upon.

"But why that table in particular? Why not the one furthest away from us?? We're onto you sunshine... We'll be monitoring every sip you take of the delicious local IPA your drinking far too slowly to be a benign presence. Any other person who meant us no harm would have been half way through that pint by now. Keep an eye on him Karen, I'm just going for a piss..."

I love feeling the tension build and build between me and them, to the point where this non-existent war of attrition raging in their minds is just one more non-sip of my drink away from becoming an all-out wild west saloon brawl, minus the honky-tonk pianist providing our farcical soundtrack.

Then all of a sudden something will happen; an unintended connecting of our worlds will occur. The couple's dog, who had up until then been lying obediently at their feet will suddenly get up to stretch its legs, and without excusing itself, stroll casually across the hard border between us and into my domain, and I'll start petting it without thinking, stroking it like it was my own dog, telling it how lovely it is.

When people who think they should fear you see you being kind and gentle to something or someone they really care for then you immediately go from public enemy number one to being their newly adopted son in the blink of an eye. It's great! Shortly after I'd finished stroking their dog, during which I'd looked across at the couple to make friendly eye contact, I was being bombarded with unlimited pork scratchings and original flavour scampi fries! Win!!!

People feel better when they realise their fears were just unnecessary figments of their imagination, preventing them from being able to get along with everyone, and so it's a privilege for me to be someone's fear which is able to make itself disappear.