The Invisible

There but unseen.

Glanced at then passed by. Looked through. Tolerated in transactions between strangers. The invisible wither on the streets and in their homes.

Parents neglected by children chasing their dreams. Roles modelled and superseded instead of lessons-learned. The cycle perpetuating itself from Gen X to Gen Y, before and beyond.

Circumstances no longer accepted as fleeting but for perpetuity. Work is the one link to speak, for tenuous friendships to bud. Employers exploit and rake in profit in preference to offering a wage so a person can do more than survive.

Family-focused live lives full of love from and for their families plus the love lives on. Careful couples feather their nests for a comfortable retirement. Otherwise, for some, struggle, despondency, and loneliness ensue.

Still others’ lives are adrift in a haze of 40% proof. Far from invisible, their pain emanates through the walls and along the corridors of their existence. Falling and mewling. Shouting, screaming, and abusing themselves. Crying for a hand they will shun after they are well and return to their poison.

Quieter ones, proper, seek no attention. Dress down, poor hygiene, little facial care, no decoration, or plumage. In their heads, they create to the exclusion of their needs. Accepting of their unobserved being, hiding in their eyries, singling merrily. Alone, yet also with and for the world at their fingertips.

The sparrows of our society surround themselves with like-minded knitters, spotters, walkers, drinkers, chatterers. Blazing a stream of laughter and joie de vivre for others to envy or dismiss.

Some spurn opportunities to go quietly or with cheer into the autumns or winters of their lives. They choose to kick and fight to be seen, to be heard. Their fanciful swords, pickaxes, and hammers or a constant drip, drip, drip of opinions one day turn to action and realisation. Their words and petitions bear the fruit of their invisible labours.

A path uneasily trod, chosen for selfishness, turns into vulnerability and emotion against the harm and injustices inflicted on those who have no choice to live their frail, impoverished fight to survive until no strength of will remains.

When all their corners have been turned these unsung heroes vanish. Perhaps memorialised by journalists and other metaphorical sword bearers and those who once knew them. Yet another cacophony of activists will replace them, to batter against walls of ignorance and blindness and the wrongs of the world.

Most, though, forgotten or never noticed by the people who slumber through their tiny, mundane servitude that they will never address because they are sightless to others unlike themselves. They prefer to toe the company line; work, consume, repeat. Too blind to acknowledge a well-intentioned gesture. Too deaf to hear an opening to a conversation with a stranger. Too preoccupied to notice the unattractive invisible barely surviving who pass them by or sit at their feet with their emptiness and beloved canine curled next to them.

From one unseen, unloveable creature existing on the far periphery of society to all the others out there on the streets and in the ether, we have hope.

One day the sleepwalkers and elites of this world will recognise the path they are on as their descent to hollowness.

One day they will choose to create rather than stifle and enable others to thrive. Then there will be abundance on earth for all.