Inequality is reflected in being a victim of crime too.

I am on jury duty this week - and it has got me reflecting that inequality is not just about income and property - it is also about your likelihood of being the victim of crime.
I didn't get picked today, but I did get through the first ballot.  It was my first time inside a courtroom and my first time inside the court building with all its security.  I found it a foreign space.  It is a place of extremes: well dressed, well educated and well paid judges and court staff, and many less well dressed, mostly less well paid and probably less well educated people who are clearly "in the system".

I ended up in a courtroom where a couple were being tried for rape and unlawful sexual connection amongst a range of similar charges.  I can make no judgement on this case, but I was reminded of a conversation I had in 2009 with a woman working for Corrections  who had been involved with this piece of research looking at who the victims of crimes are.  It turns out that there are enormous inequalities in our likelihood of becoming victims.

Most people (64%) experience no crime ever, while a mere six percent of people experience 54% of crimes. Some victims experience crimes against them time after time after time.  I remember going to a play at Christchurch Women's Prison where the women told there stories and I have to say that they were harrowing.  Every single one of the women in the play had also been victims of appalling crimes of violence over and over and over again.

The research also found that those most likely to experience crime were younger, from Mäori or ‘other’ ethnic groups, unmarried, more economically vulnerable, living in rented accommodation, in more economically deprived areas, in sole parent households or households comprised of flatmates or ‘other’ family combinations, in metropolitan cities (excluding Auckland), and in the upper half of the North Island.

In other words, these are people with few resources - financial, educational or social - which might allow them to escape the experience of ongoing crime.   And at the time the government cynically covered the release of this report by releasing some other document at the same time so that the media nevery picked this up.   Of course our government's refusal to spend money on poverty or address housing needs or even to feed hungry kids in decile 1 and 2 schools all serve nicely to maintain the status quo or even make it worse.

And I tell you what - my observations today really tell me that it really would be cheaper to spend the money helping kids in poverty, ensuring they have access to good schooling and to decent living conditions rather than spending it on the punitive police car at the bottom of the cliff. 

Is busyness closing us down to life?

I was intrigued the other day to read that the word “busy” written in Chinese uses the characters killing and heart.  This really made me sit up and stop, because it connected with something that I’ve been grappling with for some time. 

Back in the early 1990s, I remember writing about a phenomenon that some researchers were calling time deepening.  As part of my Masters research, I interviewed mountain bikers who told me that mountain biking was a concentrated, intense experience that meant a day could feel like a weekend away and it allowed them to spend the other day of their weekend doing something else.  Some bikers connected this with consuming more stuff (bikes, kayaks, gear of various types, for example). 

This is a first world problem!  People with good incomes most often talk about time being their limiting factor, rather than money.  Over the last 20 years, this problem has worsened, and it seems to me that we mindlessly run to consume more experiences and stuff and to earn the money that we ostensibly need to do these things.  Worse still, the amazing array of opportunities that we have doesn’t make us happy – rather we feel that we are missing out on the things that we don’t have time for.  Furthermore, we have stopped noticing the wonders of our life – we no longer have time to take in the view or smell the flowers or soak up the pleasure of being with our friends or in nature.

The Chinese had something.  Busyness really is killing our hearts – closing us down and making us less able to deal with both the pleasure and the pain that life throws our way. 

My path in recent years has been one of trying to slow down and do and consume less and most recently I’ve been working on being happier.  I’m amazed at how easy it is to be happy and mostly, I find that that means finding space to tend to the heart that I had been squeezing out of existence. 

I am happier, I earn a lot less money than I did, and because of that there are some things that I cannot do.  However I can enjoy the everyday, the amazing array of sights, sounds and experiences that are always available and enjoyable.  I find I don’t need a great deal to be happy and I have time for the things that matter.

The caveat for all this pleasure is that in some ways, I’m also sadder.  To be happy my heart has to be open and spacious, but an open and spacious heart notices the sadness too.  I find that I really care that we are destroying the beautiful planet that supports this wondrous thing called life.  I care for all the people out there rushing from pillar to post trying to fit more and more into their lives and feeling stressed and unhappy.  I care about those living in poverty when there is really no need for it to be this way,  and I fear for the gorgeous children that I know who are born into a world that seems to be rushing headlong into a very difficult future – a future made more difficult because so many have shut down their hearts  and don’t want to feel the pain of what is happening. 

Still, I find I’m prepared to feel sad because being with that sadness is the only way that I know what needs to be changed and it is the only way I know to really be open to the pure joy that there is in life too.