It’s been a long day. There’s going to be a lot of that now that I’m back in England. I was up at five to get to London by seven so that I could find three hours of quiet working time in a cafe before going to lie on the treatment bed of my magic friend with her magic hands which do what they do regardless of whether she’s in charge. I just make it up she’ll laugh, which is code for something greater happening; she is one of life’s master healers. There. I’ve said it. On the way to the cafe I passed a woman on the street who sat in her raincoat, hood up, a stub of a roll up cigarette in her fingers. I doubled back and asked if I could get her a coffee. She nodded. Milk and sugar? Another nod. I noted in myself the urge to not give her sugar. Can you imagine? A well-healed middle-aged woman lecturing a woman on the street about the benefits of healthy eating. The front of it. The lack of understanding. Yoga and kale were not the issue. But it was her muteness that stayed with me as I walked away, fetched her a coffee and a croissant and delivered them back. She was there but not there. She was absent and in shock. I imagined myself in her shoes. Later I called Andy and we talked about it; he’s retraining as a psychotherapist and works the free phone line of a therapy drop in, he regularly speaks to people for whom kale and yoga won’t cut it. We talked about how society’s set up to praise winners, reward success, how hard it is to do anything when the spark is gone and you’re being blamed for it. We talked about the vitalness of connection. I’d driven up listening to The Wild Edge Of Sorrow and told him about the town where heart disease sky-rocketed as families fractured and community broke up. The science of belonging. I told him how when I left the cafe three hours later I walked past the woman again and this time she was writing, her anorak off, sun on her face, we locked eyes for a second and she flipped another page in her notebook. That spark of connection, her with the words she had written, that belonging that is the difference between life and death.
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We have become fractured and therefore injured and alone , I truly believe this is the dis ease hurting us most . Connection and understanding have a lot of strength.
Yes, the cashlessness culture hurts people in largely unacknowledged ways.