Life just got harder. Again

I suspect that many don’t appreciate how speed bumps to the easy life are making them discombobulated and often cranky for no reason. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Paul Jeffers

An ex-prime minister once said: “life wasn’t meant to be easy”, and he was pilloried for it, particularly by a younger generation who thought the tough life belonged to the history books or Christmas Day when grandpa scared the kiddies with talk of roadkill stews, string drawers and do-it-yourself dentistry.

Life just got harder. Again. And I suspect that many don’t appreciate how speed bumps to the easy life are making them discombobulated and often cranky for no reason. A post-pandemic fragility pervades people and their systems.

First, a bit of history. It was only 50-odd years ago that your average working family found life a stretch.

Food was calories, not cuisine; driving was a serious excursion, not a convenient trip; the bathroom at home was singular; entertainment was the back yard; holidays were for visiting relatives; and whingers had to do the washing up.

Then the appliance revolution arrived. Shortly after, the two-car family arrived. Then meals were bought in packs or picked up through windows. Clothes were so cheap, they became disposable. Work got done on computers with a latte to go.

But it was the frictionless technology of the past decade that really made our lives easy and, more pertinently, raised our expectations for an even easier future. Suddenly, we could sit on the couch and click for a meal; for tradies to pitch for your job; for a pair of shoes; for directions to the party, or, better still, a ride to the party. We could put alerts out for furniture, for jobs, for news. We could ask the butler in the box for information, music, lighting or just to settle an argument.

We took this as our due and it’s only now, as rust appears on the wheels of the frictionless life, that we’re realising life isn’t always a continuous journey to better, that it sometimes takes a step back and, gulp, it may not resume its well-greased journey for a while.

We wait for deliveries now. The supply chain is rusty – sometimes stopping work, often delaying work, certainly making it more expensive. No one trusts just-in-time systems, they’re hoping for ASAP or, simply, please, please, please.

Staff can’t be found, so businesses cut operations or services and customers wait – wait on phone lines, wait at tables, wait for bookings and wait for the bill that will be bigger for a lesser experience.

Food is expensive. The $8 head of cauliflower, the $7 coffee, the $100 piece of meat for the family. Or it’s just not there – shelves half emptied by floods, supply chain hiccups or a lack of staff to stack them.

Fun is hard to schedule. Have a RAT test before the party; get insurance for the holiday; travelling companions sidelined by iso; pay $50 a head to make a restaurant booking for friends who may not make it. Non-refundable is the way of commerce and of life.

Perhaps we don’t need reminding of all the ways that life has become less of what it was and much less of what we expected by now. And, sure, we’re not at war, not starving, not filling hospital corridors, but expectations are important. And in hundreds of little ways, our expectations have been dashed. We’re not used to that.

We are recalibrating to a harder life and it’s easy to feel aggrieved. We’ve lost something before we’d fully appreciated what we’d gained. History has begun again and we might start learning its lessons by revisiting that comment by the ex-prime minister and finishing the original George Bernard Shaw quote, “… but take courage: it can be delightful”.

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