Fish bowl to fish out of water

The day after Canada's federal election

Yesterday (well, it was yesterday when I drafted this; actually, it happened on April 29th), I had an experience that left me feeling very much like a fish out of water – never mind any parade.

Ai-yi-yi.

Let me explain.

I had an appointment for an eye assessment in downtown Toronto (note: this occurred the day after the federal election in Canada that left many of us feeling disappointed – even despondent – in which an international banker guy took over as leader of our poor, sad, lost, beleaguered country).

I have cataracts, you see, & had this appointment at a clinic where one gets them removed. Being a person on a fixed income, with shall we say rather limited financial resources, I was already aware I would not be opting for one of the very costly options, but for the free (to me) one covered by Ontario's health care program (OHIP – Ontario Health Insurance Plan; so, in other words, paid for by taxpayers' dollars).

My first clue that I was entering a different world was the location of the clinic in Toronto's Yorkville – a very posh district of the city (one in which I'd likely not even buy myself a beer, let alone a meal). Well outside my financial comfort zone.

Okay.

So there's a lot of waiting at this clinic.

You're given a couple of eye assessments, then eye drops, then you sit & wait to speak with the surgeon.

By a weird coincidence, there were 3 of us with the same first name at the clinic that afternoon.

So there I sat, in a small waiting area – with one of the other Janets.

We got chatting – the 5 of us sitting there. All very friendly & superficial to start.

Then it began to be revealed that the other Janet (we never met Janet # 3, who was in another part of the clinic) was pretty well-off.

A house in Toronto, with frequent tennis games at the Granite Club.

A home "in the country" with a large property (& tennis court).

As well as a condo in Florida (bought after having last year sold a home she & her husband owned there) with a "gourmet chef" & restaurant on the first floor where meals can be ordered up in a trice.

And I thought, "Oops! I am wayyyyy out of my league here."

There was also a couple from Barbados (Barbados?? Turns out people come to this clinic from all over the place).

And a woman from Thunder Bay (a 16-hour drive from Toronto) who'd recently visited her daughter in Arizona, where she'd felt uncomfortable with people there. The four people now chatting concurred that Americans are not really very smart or politically wise … the implication being that otherwise, they would never have elected Donald Trump.

Followed of course by the now-inevitable descent into Trump-dissing – with the other Janet being very forceful in her assessment of Mr. Trump's glaring faults & his sociopathy (her word, not mine).

I'd already backed out of the conversation, my "fish out of water" status having quickly become clear to me.

The conversation was very much dominated by this other Janet. The woman from Barbados would try to interject the occasional comment, but Janet was the type of person (we've all met people like this) who quickly turns any remark made by anyone else into an excuse to throw her oar quickly back in & ensure that hers remains the dominant voice in the conversation. (I felt kind of sorry for Ms. Barbados, whose voice was much quieter, & even though I didn't share her views, could not help but notice that anything she said barely registered before Janet # 2 would jump back in to re-gain the conversational reins.)

I heard how our new PM (prime minister) would quickly fix things up. (I guess we’ll see about that, I thought.)

"Taxes are so high!" lamented Janet # 2, who along with her husband (a retired banker) seems to occupy a pretty comfortable position in the world and arguably possesses a generous share of material goods.

Phew.

& there I sat, Ms. Fish Out of Water, thinking

"Just ... wow! The entitlement of this kind of person simply blows my mind." (Hmmm. Well maybe I didn't really put that together until later? I think what I was thinking most acutely at the time was "OMG OMG I do not belong here, get me out of here, please, please, pretty please!")

She lamented that our young people can simply not afford to buy a house in this city (all too true of course; the truth of this being affirmed with appropriate outrage by the Barbados couple – Thunder Bay woman had gone off by now for her time with the surgeon) ... but I wonder if she has ever observed that our so-very-prosperous Boomer generation has, well, let's just admit it out loud, lived pretty high off the hog in post-World War II Canada. And hey! Let's be honest – I've been very much on the receiving end of a lot of that largesse myself for most of my life!

A Small Digression

I once took an all-expenses-paid trip to Malaysia to give two talks (to female audiences) about being a mother & environmental activist. Talk about a flukey experience, eh?? but I don’t want to get too sidetracked into all that here.

& spent three nights at a luxury resort hotel in Kuala Lumpur – all expenses paid, remember – I did not receive any speaking fees but all my travel & accommodation costs were covered – where, predictably, little old me felt pretty much like a fish out of water.

The three-day luxury stay gave me a quick whiff of how quickly one can begin to feel "entitled" to this sort of royal treatment. Just a brief glimpse, a flash of insight, into how quickly un-earned privileges can morph into a sense of entitlement.

I was very much an alien in that luxury resort environment. But that experience & the insights gained from it & other elements of my trip there definitely helped give me a bit of awareness about some interesting aspects of how the world works – not inside my own little world – but in the wider one outside it.

Now, back to the clinic...

I couldn't wait to get out of there – to escape from the uncomfortable (to me) conversation I'd just quietly opted out of, basically. I tried to return to reading my novel, but it was kind of impossible with this loud & lively conversation all around me in such a confined space.

I want to be clear here. I am perfectly comfortable with being one of the world's "little people."

Living a modest life, with limited means. I've been downwardly socially mobile all my life, pretty much – & that's okay by me too. (I always seem to do everything ass-backward to what everybody around me is doing. It's just a thing with me for some reason – I never set out to be an outlier; it just kind of happened. Maybe it’s in my wiring; I don’t know.)

I'm always, now, very well aware that my own life – by comparison to the majority of the planet's inhabitants – is one of vast privilege.

And I'm fine with the fact that in that clinic world, the no-paying option leaves me now just waiting to get on a waiting list for my procedure.

Heck, in many or perhaps most countries in the world, my financial situation would likely afford me no options for cataract surgery at all!

And?

I'm grateful, too, I guess, to get this so-vivid illustration – on the day after Canada's election of a global banker & businessman with some seemingly pretty shady dealings under his belt – that our self-awareness about how many privileges we take for granted, here in our little fish bowls, can be rather lacking.

Canadians (maybe not just Canadians, but all comfortably-off people everywhere?) can sometimes seem pretty smug. Pretty complacent. I suppose we can all become a little complacent? Entitled? Unconsciously. I know I'm definitely guilty of it myself at times. The tricky thing is that it's generally only after a pretty nasty kick in the pants that this self-awareness kicks in!

As a regular reader of Racket News here on Substack, with its frequent postings/revelations/insights about the turbulent political/government (& media) scene in the U.S., where the radically changed political landscape is rattling the cages of the entitled class of Democrats & its fellow travellers...

I can clearly see that those of us in our two countries who’ve enjoyed a pretty decent share of material comforts are not going to be any too keen to relinquish things we’ve come to take for granted; we grow to see these entitlements as merely our due, don’t we?

"Interesting times" ahead indeed!! For all of us, on both sides of the border, I daresay.