It seems to be uppermost in our consciousness
to be reviewing not only our own behaviour and thinking but that of all around
us and the whole of mankind’s history. I have been no exception and so I’ve
been tracking back through my own family history and this is what I found going
back 100 years...
Half of my family came from the Republic of Ireland and the other half from
England. Coming from a protestant background on both sides I was curious to know
how the Irish contingent coped with the Irish political troubles. There is no
question in my mind that English governments of a bygone age were thugs,
bullies and greed monsters. Starving a nation for your profits is not something
one should be proud of to put on your CV. Many of us hope we will never see
such things again, but the reality is that we are still are but this time it’s more
the case of other nations right across the globe using aggressive tactics to
win power and authority although most are not done via overtly violent means. Capitalism
it can be and is being argued by many is just as oppressive as ever - a shame
really as it doesn’t need to be to continue and it is showing clear signs that
it slowing if not quite stopping it’s less than savoury profit mongering side
even in the UK.
Back in Ireland 100 years ago, mixed in with all the very confusing politics
and foul violence in contravention of the later Geneva Convention on rules of
war from both sides, were many stories of miracles happening. Rather akin to a certain
Christmas in the trenches during WWI where everyone stopped fighting to be
friends for a day instead. From my family archives when the Black and Tans
arrived one day instead of it leading to fighting everyone decided to party
instead. Ireland has many such tales. It’s as if people tire of violence so
much that they’d rather forget what they were upset about in the first place. Sadly,
just as in the trenches of WWI, the fighting resumed all too quickly.
Opportunity after opportunity for peace was missed because not enough people
wanted it at the same time enough to stop the violence and negotiate for it
until much, much later. It was as if fighting and bullying had become the
normal daily routine and if you did not join in with that you would automatically
become an enemy to all and a target to eradicate.
What this should teach us is to step
away when we are angry and cool off to avoid conflict, but our human emotions and
passions have a habit of overriding our cognitive reasoning when we need to use
it most.
There was a lovely tale of a family who were members of the British aristocracy
who instead of robbing the Irish of all their food, repeatedly gave people
employment bang in the middle of the potato famine in Catholic Ireland. If one
industry failed they’d start a new one while also supporting the basic needs of
housing, education, health and food within the community. They installed
running water, electricity, started nursery schools and made all feel welcome. Joseph
Rowntree along with many industrialists did much the same in the England.
This should
teach us that not everyone should be tarred with the same brush just because
they belong to one section of society or another. The truth is we all belong to
many different classifications of groups simultaneously thereby making it the
height of insanity to side with one against another. When we do so, we are in
effect starting to side against ourselves instead of accepting who we really are
and building on our best behavioural traits.
My own family eventually moved from the Republic of Ireland, some fled to the
USA, others to Canada and Australia and my contingent went to what is now known
as Northern Ireland. We befriended Catholics there and got attacked by Protestants
for doing so and so my Dad brought us to England, where we also got bullied for
being part-Irish. Some of my cousins do still live in both in Eire and in
Northern Ireland and what they do is much the same as what all my family do
across the globe – our best to avert trouble and help those in need.
I could just as easily have been born black, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist,
Hindu and experienced the same sort of family history. I, myself, was very
nearly born in Scotland where my Dad did his National Service with the RAF. I
could have been born in a developing nation and been subjected to all manner of
poverty, tyranny and abuse if it had happened to be a dictatorship bent on
terrorising its own people. I count myself lucky despite our troubled history.
After delving into my past it then struck me
that you don't have to be of any particularly colour, nationality, gender,
religion, state of health or age to be persecuted, oppressed or prejudiced
against. You just have to be humane enough or vulnerable enough to not fight
back until it's a last resort. You just have to be sufficiently different from
the majority that surrounds you. Bizarrely until this century compromise and
mutual respect has never been as fashionable as it is now. I think that's a
hopeful sign myself as it offers the opportunity to learn better ways from past
mistakes, some of which we entered into with the best of intentions to ‘fix’
things, others from less palatable ideals which I hope are now being eradicated
from this planet for good.
All relationships should be symbiotic (mutually beneficial) and it is when they
are not that troubles escalate. By respecting that others have as much right to
learn their way as you do so long as
they don’t cause anyone else any harm really where can a problem start? Those
quirky differences invariably lead to new inventions and better methods that
help us all.
Know yourself first to understand others
My own self awareness has reached a point
whereby I am conscious of an intense dislike and wariness of those who display
traits I have fought so long and hard against in myself. I’ve learned that it
is wrong for others to hold me responsible for the actions of our collective
ancestors. I have learned that for us to forgive others we first have to learn
to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we have made that have caused pain,
hardship and all manner of suffering to others. I have learned that none of us
can do that while we are making excuses for our actions, we first have to
accept that we all do cause harm (albeit often inadvertently) despite the
majority of the time we striving not to. What we do thereafter marks out our
true characters. Do we apologise? Do we try to make amends or send someone in
to help to salve our consciences? I have fought all my life to avoid trouble
and making mistakes that cause harm to others with varying degrees of success,
but practice does help us to become more proficient in this objective.
In my 20s I would walk away from people who were distressed if they were not
personally known to me and not bother to suggest someone else to seek help
from. In my 30s I stopped doing that by engaging with people more in order to
signpost options for them to consider trying. That way they themselves became
the key factor in designing their own solution simply by choosing which route
to take out of their troubles, and in that process they shared their way of
learning which has helped me to solve problems of my own. I think signposting
options is the minimum people can do but it should be expressed that way and
not as authoritarian commands or arrogant advice. We have not lived their lives
and therefore cannot be experts in how to solve their problems unless and until
we are trained to do so.
In my 40s I began to do more, not least
because long standing challenges in my personal life began to find solutions
that really worked for me. That I feel is the key to life - the constant
balancing act of looking after yourself so that you can support others. By
finally resolving my own problems I was able to give more by way of support to
others, especially strangers in the most dire of needs. We insure a greater
chance of others supporting us should we ever need it by lending a hand to
others when we are strong in ourselves. People who have been particularly
remarkable to me are those with so little who nonetheless give more than
average to others. Without exception they all say “it’s because I am not the
worst off, I’ve suffered less than this person or that one.” They include many
victim of physical abuse, many a trauma victim, many a disabled person from
accident, illness, crime and war. I find that profoundly humbling. They shine
forth like a beacon of hope for us all yet live among us largely unnoticed
which most of them prefer. Compared to them I am inadequate, my only talent
seems to be observe and report things. They tell me that that is vital.
Helping others really does pay dividends when it comes to helping yourself –
you’ll never be with zero support. You’ll never be without love, appreciation
and friends. That doesn’t always come from those who you help, nor from those
you know best, but I think that’s what makes it all the more rewarding. What
greater riches could a person really desire beyond being acknowledged and
respected as a person of humanity and integrity?
It seems that every century mankind gets in a fluster and lets its heart’s
desires get the better of its head and soul. Desires seem to get the better of
our needs too. I think our challenge now is not to let that happen again. We
know already how to prevent it. We know already what vicious aggressive
arguments and actions lead to. It would be boring of us to go that way again...
This time we have a greater choice of directions to go in because we are much
more aware of ourselves and much more advanced in our technologies and methods,
aren’t we?
Get to know the good and bad of you and set about choosing the positive you to
win over the angry, annoyed, frustrated, confused, bitter, resentful you. We
cannot expect errors by others to be corrected overnight when we do not do the
same with regard to our own. It takes time, but don’t avoid it, make a step
toward it today. Then teach someone else how you did it. Find a balance between
looking after yourself and supporting others that suits where you are now. It’s
always a work in progress, as my emotive outbursts on Twitter illustrate, but
bit by bit I become calmer and more at peace with myself and the world in
general every day.
I close with an exercise I haven’t done in
years until very recently which I thought might help lift your spirits in these
confusing and challenging times. Something like this (but in your style with
your words and images) might be a good place to start to find yourself again in
this strange period in our global history. No one else has to see it ever, just
you. Remember if we have been the creators of mistakes harmful to our species,
our societies, our nations and our planet, we also have the intelligence and
know how to find the solutions too. We are all part of the history of this planet.
What sort of history makers do we want to be remembered for in 100 years time? I’d
like to think that THIS is the century when we get the recipe to living
harmoniously with each other and with nature just right.
Blaming others is no way to begin a healing
or a healthy, prosperous future for all. We are all to blame for something;
it’s not clever to only remember past hurts and never another’s good points. The
good news is that the majority of people have the latter in greater abundance
than their cruelties and sad blunders.
Take good care of yourselves and others and
always strive to keep things friendly, please.
(PS:
Please excuse spelling and grammatical errors; I’m on holiday to recharge my
batteries!)
