Honest to Blog - Small Great Things

Okay.

Anecdote.

Something funny.

No. Something catchy.

Wait. Something that makes it clear that I am kind of hitting a writer’s block because people have said things that have made me question everything about myself, and my support system has felt non-existent, this past week.

Hmm…

Movie? Song?

Book.

Small Great Things.

This is a novel by Jodi Picoult.

For those that haven’t read it:

1) Please do!

2) Tell me what you think of it?

The novel addresses profoundly challenging concerns such as race, prejudice and justice.

In the novel, the protagonist Ruth is an African American nurse who is reassigned from her patient due the parents of the newborn being white supremacists. The hospital complies with the request to reassign nurses, but when the newborn goes into cardiac arrest and nobody is around Ruth must decide whether to go against specific orders not to touch the child or whether to intervene.

What follows next is the court case, inspired by a true story, where Ruth is advised that bringing race into the courtroom isn’t a winning strategy. She must face the trial while also trying to keep her life from falling to pieces.

This post will be the third in a series of things I am passionate about – equality.

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(New Zealand Prime Minister - Jacinda Ardern)

I feel that with what has been happening over in New Zealand, this post may be either thought provoking, or perhaps ill timed.

I apologise in advance if this is insensitive and if my thoughts are somehow incorrect. I encourage you to educate me, if I am wrong, rather than shame me.

To me, the shooting in New Zealand has highlighted that we must stand together as human beings, we must favour compassion over prejudice, and we must support one another’s right to religious practices.

There have been a lot of people talking about this event, and those that have taken place in its wake – from mixed emotions about 'Egg Boy' to an amazing amount of support and compassion being served to the Muslim community by the New Zealand Prime Minister.

I had intended to write this post before these events, but I feel that it is an unfortunate springboard from which to dive into my thoughts on equality.

Not about race, gender or sexuality, but instead about how we should all be taking a page out of the PM’s book and spreading love.

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I encourage you to listen to Mr Washington by Nahko and The Medicine People (and if it is the first time you have listened to their music then you should also sus out Warrior People, My Country and Budding Trees - these are a few of my favourites).

I feel that their lyrics resonate with my beliefs:

“Passion for equality, quality of life, for justice and liberation for all.”

I am sure this post will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I hope that I say something that makes you think and perhaps helps you to understand why, to me, true equality is so important.

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I have debated often with my partner about the idea of Utopia. My partner and I have differing opinions on whether utopia is a more likely scenario than dystopia. However, having both read Utopia for Realists written by Rutger Bregman, we believe that humans should be striving for a more utopian world.

Unfortunately it feels as though humans have stopped striving for a new utopia. We are all too busy with the daily grind to stop and visualise how we can work together to advance as a species and create a higher level of utility (an ethical measure of promoting happiness) for all.

It seems that we have been lured into a false sense of security wherein the rich people (that small percentage of our world who own the majority of the wealth) are able to make us believe we are happy with the way things are, or that there is no point trying to change them because we don’t have the power to do so.

We may not all agree with Bregman’s ideas of purposeful, limited amounts of work being more beneficial or with his notion that open borders would solve many of the issues of civilisation but… why not try to inject a moral compass into our capitalist mind-set?

Instead of constantly seeking out the negative and then concurring that there is nothing we can do about it I believe that we should all check ourselves.

We have the power and the ability to be better than we are as individuals.

Maybe we won’t achieve the utopia that Bregman argues we should strive for, but we can choose to be more thoughtful in our words and actions which in turn can have an incredibly positive effect on those around us!

Random acts of kindness may not stop the world, but it can help us to live in a more open-minded and loving society.

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You know when you are driving and someone cuts you off… if that was your friend, would you yell the same way? Would you get as mad at telemarketers if you thought of them as people just doing their jobs?

One thing I was talking about the other day was how we watch movies with violence and we seem to just ignore the amount of police officers that come to a fatal end. We accept the collateral damage of so many lives as we watch superheroes work towards ‘the greater good.’

I feel that this happens in every day life too.

We accept that people in our way are collateral damage who don’t really matter because we are caught up in our own thoughts and feelings, trapped in our daily grind to the point that we don’t always show as much kindness as we so easily could.

I am guilty of this more than I often care to admit.

But I am also grossly self-aware; this means that I constantly aim to be conscious of my character and feelings.

When I realise that maybe I wasn’t as kind as I should have been, or if I responded in a way that was hurtful, I will make a point of apologising.

To some this may be a sign of weakness.

Nobody likes to admit that they are wrong or that they have thoughts and opinions that should be altered.

But to me, apologising is my way of acknowledging to my friends, family and colleagues that I am human (so I am flawed), but I am also respectful enough to acknowledge that they are also human (so the way I effect their life matters to me).

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I think that if more people took the time to become self-aware then perhaps we actually could work towards a more utopian future.

If we laid aside our prejudices and saw each other as people, rather than as examples that contradict our beliefs, then maybe the world would actually be a better place.

To me, equality isn’t about race, religion, ideals, beliefs… it is about seeing each other respectfully and acknowledging our similarities.

I am passionate about equality because I know what it is like to be ostracised for things we cannot always control such as the colour of skin or mental health.

Subjectification verses objectification, equality is about morality.