So I wrote once about how I used to be a gamer – Atari 2600, and a Sega nerd, until I stopped. Then I gave in and bought an Xbox 360. I love it, and have loved catching up with some of the biggest gaming franchises of the last decade. What I was unaware of back then, but know all too well now, is the trap to ensnare the anal mind; achievements. I’m never going to get them all, but I’m never going to be able to stop trying.
On top of that, now there is the new generation. Many of the folks I gamed with are moving on to a place I can’t yet afford to follow. But dammit, how long is not being able to afford an Xbox One going to stop me getting one? Souped up GTA V? The Witcher 3? The new Gears of War? The new Mass Effect? I recently had to be convinced to fork out £90ish for 4 seasons of Game of Thrones on Blu Ray, so I’ll be with the old 360 for a while, I think. Unless you want to buy me a One? No? Fine.
Rach and I often find ourselves asking how people can seem to afford to splash out so much on houses, cars, clothes and gadgets, because we genuinely have no clue. For the area we live in, our combined income is over the average, and yet we cannot find a way to ‘live within our means’ as the saying goes. Wages are spent before they are earned, and anything we manage to save is saved just in time for the car to blow up or something equally well timed. We have holidays (not expensive ones), we have an Internet connection and we have books, music and a TV. A lack of any one of these would label our family deprived, which makes you wonder what families that have to exist without any of this are? I suppose that depends on who you’re asking; Katie Hopkins, who has recently overtaken Clarkson as the UK’s number 1 reason to bring back hanging, might consider them cockroaches, but nobody should try to legitimise that talking bag of stale sweat-scum from Danny Devito’s unwashed scrotum by pretending her opinion is good for anything other than taking a huge shit on.
Anyway, I find myself stuck between a wish to moan about not ever seeming to have enough while other folks have seemingly bottomless pockets and a consciousness that reminds me that there are a great many people who have much less than we’ve got and maybe I should be a bit more grateful, and I call myself unpleasant names. And then I remember the wheels that turn constantly to keep this distressing status quo in place and the lethargy that it engenders in people too focused on the wrong things to make any kind of positive change. I remember the system that masquerades as democracy run in the financial interests of corporate entities with more rights than poor people, entities that will gladly send us running, screaming, fighting, warring, abusing and unseeing into endless catastrophe just to keep profits growing. And then I feel fury at the injustice that is perpetrated everywhere, and helplessness at the obvious impotence of that fury; unable to change things, unable to bring justice, unable to do anything but acknowledge it is pointless even to try. But then I remember something else.
I remember what my life really is – a collection of moments, lived in series; a collection of memories made and memories yet to be made. I am extremely lucky in that the vast majority of those moments are worth remembering and bring joy. An increasing collection of them are perfect moments, and to quote the late Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time; “Against one perfect moment, the centuries beat in vain”.
Finally, after this endlessly repeating dance of petulance, annoyance, guilt, fury, helplessness and gratefulness, I come at last to the end and feel always the same thing: contentment. Let the world continue to turn, let the rich and powerful continue in their greed, let the hateful continue to spit bile. Let them not go unchallenged, and let us remember to spit in their eye should we get the opportunity. But above all, let us be happy for the things that bring us happiness because, and I know this works, you make others happy in turn. If you can do that, even briefly, how can it be anything other than worth it?
