Bon Journal

Between two extremes

I am wearing the same black tights, newly washed from my previous event a week before. The guests are in the same age range: 30 to 60.

I am wearing a different dress, and I'm the best-dressed person here. The place is a community centre, not a corporate apartment in the centre of London. The conversations I have are completely different.

Tonight the guests sit by themselves, and a few engage in conversation. Last week, the guests talked to each other while standing up. They were well-dressed and high earners. Tonight the guests largely did not have an income.

How is it that we all start out on an equal footing -- as babies born into this world? By the time we get to this age, we can be worlds apart.

The guests at last week's party were bankers, stockbrokers, fund managers, business owners, consultants --- in short, the cream of the crop.

The guests tonight, other than the volunteers and the assistants, have been diagnosed with mental illness.

I belong to neither group, only between two extremes.

5 December 2003 Friday