Letters from Money Bags

I received three letters from ODSP since last I reported on my conflictual relationship with the Money Bag. Happily none of them were about cutting me off. I am counting my blessings and expressing my gratitude to my case worker who took the time to figure out one of the ongoing issues that kept making the system spit me out.

The first letter was to tell me they had paid me too much in January, that being the month I first began receiving my CPP benefit. I will be receiving $55 less on my ODSP cheque for approximately five months until the “overpayment” is reimbursed.

The second letter was truly confusing but the long and short of it was that I received $100 due to the Ontario government making some kind of GST to HST conversion reimbursement. Eventually I realized everyone in the province got a minimum of $100 in this process. It is part of the preparation, I believe, to all of us getting hit with an extra tax in a few weeks.

The third letter was a precise duplicate of the first letter except for a different date. I guess R. Jackson (whose signature is on these letters) wanted to make sure I noticed the first letter. I wonder some days if I will ever have the pleasure of meeting R. Jackson.

It is puzzling (and often more than puzzling!) to be an utterly non-participating member of a conversation. These letters will come whether or not I read them, whether or not I respond to them and regardless of any impact they might have on me as a person. Truly someone could (I’ll bet somebody has!) inserted a Social Insurance Number somewhere in the system and managed to get the system to generate letters to the Social Insurance Number without there needing to be an actual person in any way attached to that Number.

One of the peculiarities of being a non-participating member of a conversation is how utterly unimportant it is to have or express a feeling or thought in the context of the conversation. It makes no difference to the letters, and whatever or whoever generates the letters, if I have any expression about the letters and their content.

I have in the past received genuine letters. Typically receiving a letter causes me to have an emotional response and several thoughts. For example I have received letters telling me that somebody is about to take a legal action against me. Such letters usually cause me to experience initially fear and then some anger and possibly regret. The thoughts I have had in such situations usually lead me to either prepare to defend myself or to explain and/or reconcile with the person who sent the letter. I have never actually been to court for such a suit and so I consider myself an effective communicator and reconcilliator.

As a person, when I receive an ODSP letter, I tend to have similar responses and thoughts. Now this is the problem as far as I am concerned – a waste of psychic energy - as there is absolutely no use in having either emotion or a thought relative to these counterfeit missives (fakes). I am certain that R. Jackson has absolutely no way of anticipating or receiving any kind of reaction from me. In fact I am kind of doubtful if R. Jackson actually exists, as a person I mean.

I can say this with some certainty because while I was away last year on the Peace Tour (www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com) I received similar letters about overpayments and finally a letter that my overpayment had been resolved. I had no idea to what these letters referred and no way to respond given my highly unstable situation at the time. When I returned to Ontario I enquired as to the nature of the overpayment and reimbursement, and my case worker had no idea or record of such events. Everything worked out somehow even though I have no idea what the “everything” was all about and never made a single call or sent a single letter in response to the letters sent to me.

I am also puzzling about advocacy and its relationship to this nonpersonal generation of quasi-communication on the subject of my income. Given that humans do in fact feel and think no matter how irrelevant it may be to do so, perhaps advocating serves the purpose of being an outlet for expression on the one hand while on the other having almost the same impact on the system as feeling and doing - absolutely none.

It is said that Ivan Illich, a defrocked priest who stood for responding humanly in the face of many absurdities and atrocities, recommended standing in public in perfect silence in the face of wanting to resist nuclear proliferation. His point was I believe that emotion, thought and language belong to the realm of community and relationship. In the presence of the annihilation of relationship, feeling, thinking and speaking are a way of giving away power. Only silence can sustain empowerment.

I am not certain that Illich was right. I do take his point that when there is no intention of listening then acting like there is amounts to exhausting one’s own personal power. The question remains: “How does one act as person in such a situation?” That is something I am exploring in doing this blog.

Judith