If wishes were horses...

I was an idealistic child.  I expected a fair world.  I expected, in order of strength of expectation, a fair government, fair police, a fair school principal, a fair teacher, fair parents, fair friends and last--and probably least--a fair sibling.

Since I expected all this fairness, I was frequently disappointed and occasionally just plain mad.

I was also a wishy-washy child, not prone to confrontation (except with little sister) and always trying to be what I saw as nice--lady-like, even.  Because of that, I may have started a few too many of my complaints about the sad state of the planet with the words "I wish..."

As in,  "I wish that Mrs. Teacher didn't treat Lulu worse than Joseph just because she doesn't like her mother."  Or  "I wish we could all afford to go to summer camp"  or even  "I wish that the coaches didn't treat kids in glasses like they were hopeless at softball, they like to play too"  I may have been a whiner, and some of those things directly affected me, but some of them didn't.  I really did want a fairer world.

My mother's response was also, frequently, "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."

She said that to me quite a lot.  More than the familiar "who said the world was fair".  Much more than "God works in mysterious ways" although I was prone to wishing God was fair also, so she may have given up on that one.

I am still pretty idealistic.  I still wish the world was fair.

I have figured out that with some truly awful things---perhaps God's mysterious ways are the cause, such as childhood cancer and tornado's sucking whole families into the sky and auto driver's having heart attacks and killing themselves and a van full of red cross workers--those I have to leave alone.  If I thought about those too much, I might become incapable of carrying on.

But other things?  There are a lot of things we could make fairer; systems we control and untruths that we agree to call true and plainly preventable ugliness.

I wish we could make it easier for everyone to get enough to eat.  And make it easier to get healthy food--no more food deserts in poor neighborhoods.   The government pays farmers to destroy excess food that would drive down prices and groceries and restaurants routinely throw out food that is completely edible just not purchased.  Some of them pour bleach on it in the dumpster to prevent anyone from eating that food safely since they didn't pay for it.

I wish we could get rid of poor neighborhoods--not by gentrification but income equilibration.  I remember a long boring car ride with parents in which I questioned why garbage collecting paid less than accounting.  Sitting behind a desk in clean clothes sounded much more pleasant than riding on a garbage truck in heat and rain and cold, and the smell could not be good.  The discussion about how the accountant had gone to college and the garbage collector had not, and that made his time more valuable became an argument about everyone's time being valuable, life was too short, and it made no sense to pay someone more for a more comfortable job.  I argued that maybe we should all get the same amount for our time since we all got a set amount of it and none of us knew how much that might be and "I wish jobs were fair"  ended with a "shush, you sound like a communist".

I wish every little nerd child  (we know who we were, and only want to learn more) and every older child and adult that found they had a passion to learn how to do something new had access to the education they needed to do that.  Not just college degrees but also skills and the arts.  I know many people that have piled up student loan debt--and not on the thing they are passionate about, but for a degree that someone talked them into because they could get a job, or a better job, or a good paying job, but not the job they really wanted and loved.  We don't really send people out to explore their options and we definitely don't encourage our children to find what they love.   We don't send our children in pursuit of their dreams, but of money--artistic children are encouraged to learn something saleable, hire-able, to make a better living.  Athletic children are encouraged to become professionals in a field that is so competitive and cutthroat that it eats their childhood then leaves them rudderless when they stop growing short of the body requirements expected in that world or get injured before they make any money.  And then there are those families that no member has ever had the ability to get an education.  Families in which they lose their dreams and hopes because reality calls for them to help earn money to feed the rest of the family long before they should have such pressure put on them.  If we stacked a single sheet of paper  for each person that wanted an education  but couldn't get  the one they dreamed of because of money or status or time requirements or responsibilities, it would be a terrifyingly high mountain.  But remember, at one time, there was no public education system, only rich children were educated to read and write.  There is no reason that our nation couldn't value education above weapons and make education free for those that wanted it.

I wish Walmart was a profit-sharing company.  That every employee shared in the profits at a rate of 50% divided quarterly with the employees and 50% with shareholders--which includes our own richest family.  And the profit sharing needs to be even, from lowest paid to highest--none of this million to the top and 10$ to the bottom.  Greed is ugly, we need to start valuing every person's time fairly.   (and the Walton' and the other shareholders would still get plenty--they didn't spend any time working, just bought some stocks)

We could all make at least a living wage doing whatever we chose as our life work.

We could all receive preventative healthcare--real preventative care--education heavy, exercise heavy, nutrition-heavy preventative healthcare, emotional coping mental healthcare--not just the insurance-will-pay-for-these-immunizations-and-these-screening-exams at these ages.  These days, healthcare is all about what can the healthcare provider get money from and not at all about improving the quality of life of the patient.  (The very name "patient"  implies a dependent, passive, and unimportant person.)

We could all receive basic financial and economic lifeskills starting in childhood.  Right now, public school is all about 1. following directions, 2. basic reading for comprehension, 3. writing for basic form-filling out, 4. Math for basic low-level work.  It teaches little regarding emotional health, caring for our selves, finding what we love doing or what we do best.  We could be aiming for helping each child reach their full potential.  Instead, except for those rare savants and the children blessed with a private education in an amazing school--the goal is to create minimally skilled, compliant, followers capable of low-level labor and office jobs.

It's not fair.

And the justice system--that is also not fair--which really sucks, since justice is supposed to be all about fairness.

I wish that people that have served their time were not pariahs afterward, relegating them to recidivism due to inability to become anything else.  Prison should not be for profit.  They should be able to get an education, psychological assistance, chemical dependency assistance, and learn skills beyond the current slave labor they provide to big corporations to make those companies have a higher profit.  Yes, they committed a crime, but if we are going to sentence every person that commits a crime to a death sentence of hopelessness and continued failure, maybe we should just decide that is who we are as a nation and kill them at entry.

 Our justice system is flawed, we have 2 adversarial teams, the prosecution and the defense.  The prosecution team includes law enforcement and the defense team frequently only includes a single unpaid and minimally experienced lawyer and both of their goals is to win.  It is not at all about truth.  It has nothing to do with justice or fairness or making the world a safer place.  And no one cares if the law that makes something a crime is fair or just or even sensible.  Our justice system has become a meat grinder that we put people into and what comes out in the end is broken lives and tears.

I wish that corporations were not controlling our government.  I wish the people running for office were not being paid for by those corporations.  I wish that the current voting system was clean and fair and unable to be hacked or twisted or bought.  Unfortunately, there is no actual oversight.  Every state is over their own.  Imagine if we all voted, 1 person 1 vote, and every person's vote counted equally.  Not this-electoral stuff.  No gerrymandering for party affiliation.  No closing of polling places or employers not letting people off get to the poll or refusing any ID's that are likely to be hard for a certain group of people to get.  Every person has a vote--and it counts.  That should not be hard.

I wish that life was fair: that the systems created by our government were fair, that the way we choose who represents us in our government were fair, that the way we decide who gets to be happy and who only gets to yearn for a chance at happiness was fair.

In my world--we all get to ride. It's only fair.