All that Glitters is Not Gold

My first ever trip abroad was to London, and to put it lightly, I was awed. Everything bewildered me! To my young eyes, all was perfection. The sense of freedom was exhilarating: I could just buy one ticket and go anywhere I wanted to in the city. I could walk alone late at night without fear of getting mugged or worse.
But even then, there was always this little nagging voice at the back of my head that told me no, this life seemed too perfect, too good to be real.
At the age of seventeen I did not understand why I was feeling that way, why what I was seeing felt deceptive.
And i soon realised why.
A blue-collar worker in a first world country does not receive a fat check at the end of the month. They don’t go on vacations, their children don’t wear designer clothes and surely do not get more toys than a toyshop on their birthday.
The blue-collard are at the lower end of the food chain. Often pulling double shifts, at the state set minimum wage, just to make the ends meet. Perks that seem standard to mos like health benefits and so on are alien to these workers.
These are the real people of the first world countries. People stuck in a vicious cycle that they cannot escape. They labor hard all day, not to live but to survive. They leave their houses at very early ages, usually severing all family ties. They are in essence, truly alone. And it is this loneliness, hard labor and lack of opportunities that is the reason for many of the horrors of this society.
Having a drink or rolling a joint before bed is no big deal for most blue-collared youth. For some it is just something that helps them relax, for others, it is something that makes their despair and hopelessness go away so they can feel happy for some time.
And the cycle is repeated generation after generation. Parents can’t provide adequately for the children, and are often prone to being mentally, verbally or even physically abusive. The children in turn try to get away from parents as soon as possible: they drop out of school to find jobs themselves so they can move out, and get stuck in the same vicious cycle as their parents before them.
The harsh reality is, all that glitters is not gold. Sitting in a coffee house in the heart of NYC looking out the window I can’t help being awed by the handsome, well dressed people rushing past, but I also cannot help notice the homeless man walking with a limp, or the old women with her care worn face in shoes that look like they’ve seen some rough days.