Why I Refuse To Be Ashamed of Being White or Apologise For History

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Both my parents were alcoholics. I don’t expect sympathy when I am just stating a fact. Growing up as the child of the town drunks I know what it was like to be the target of scorn and contempt because of someone elses actions.

‘ Everybody knows you Dad’s a drunk’

‘ I saw your mum on her way home, she’d get there quicker if she didn’t stagger so much’

‘ I bet you house stinks of beer’

‘ Did your parents put milk in your bottle as baby or did they give you beer?’

I also know what it is like to be blamed for the actions of others, my parents and others making it clear their drinking was my fault.

It took many years of therapy and self help to undo the damage of a childhood being held responsible for something I had no control over and the problems I was somehow supposed to fix. Eventually I was able to come to terms with the truth that it wasn’t my problem, my fault or my place to fix it and no one should have laid those burdens on me to begin with.

Just like my parents alcoholism being white is not my fault. It is not something I did on purpose to annoy or offend and it doesn’t make me responsible for the behaviour or complicit in ,by our modern standards, the disturbing attitudes and bad behaviour of white people past or present. Nor does the colour of my skin mean I automatically condone the aforementioned disturbing attitudes and bad behaviours past or present.

It has been the fashion for a long while now to accuse anyone who is white of being racist, as if it comes as a standard feature and not an optional extra with all white models. If you look at what racism really is, not the screaming left wing version, it’s a belief in the superiority of one race over others based on prejudice and bigotry. In other words, I think I’m better than you because of my preconceived ideas of who you are, what you are, how you act and what you believe and my obstinate adherance to those beliefs. Accusing someone of being a racist simply because they are white is a pretty racist thing to do.

Some time ago we were sat in church and the discussion turned to the treatment of indigenous people a countries like Canada and Australia by the European settlers. At one point on of the people declared

‘We really are horrible people aren’t we’ and while others nodded in agreement I spoke up

‘No, we aren’t. We didn’t do those things and we may very well have been the people who spoke out against the principle of Terra Nullius in Australia or the policy removing children from their families to residential schools. Just like we may very well have been abolitionist who campaigned against the slave trade’

It took people by surprise, the idea that we aren’t guilty of what we didn’t do.

History is not an exact science with definitive answers. Though a more rigorous attitude should be applied to gathering facts and information regarding history, it’s recording and reporting and understanding the influence of the bias of the person doing the gathering and recording has, what sources they use, primary and secondary, and what sources they discard, what information is missing, it often isn’t. We need to be aware of this just as we need to understand how a person, including ourself, understands and internalizes what someone else has written about a historical event influenced by their personal bias. History is written not just the victors but also the people who value their lives and livelihoods, consider Shakespeare writing Richard III during the reign of the granddaughter of HenryVII.

There are so many questions that need to be asked when considering the why and wherefore surrounding a moment in or a person from the past like the prevalent attitudes of the people involved and the social and economic factors behind an event. Nothing and no one from history is isolated from what has gone before or is happening then. The only constant a history is there are rarely out and out good guys and bad guys.

People who work to the agenda that white people were always the bad guys and people of colour always the victims ignore the many subtle and not so subtle nuances of history based on facts. White people were enslaved as well as the enslavers in the new world. White people were sent by white people to Australia as punishment, many lived enslaved lives and died there. In Africa indigenous people captured and sold people from other tribes into the transatlantic and Arab slave trades and kept slaves themselves. Slavery was practiced by native people throughout the Americas long before Europeans arrived. Discrimination and bigotry was not a new concept taught to indigenous people by the Europeans.

The inconvenient truth is white people started and supported the Abolitionist Movement, white people helped freed slaves make their voices heard. In 1808, following the abolition of the slave trade in the Empire, the British Navy formed the West Africa Squadron tasked with enforcing the ban on the slave trade based in Free Town, Sierra Leone. In 1862 the Lincoln administration granted full permission to the British navy to intercept American ships. Also in America white people were conductors and station masters on the Underground Railroad one of the earliest being 15 year old Levi Coffin in 1813. History isn’t like the old Western movies where you can tell the good guys from the bad guys by the colour of their hats.

Slavery is alive and well today with people of all colours, ethnic backgrounds, nationalities and religious persuasions if not taking part then turning a blind eye to out right condoning it. At the same time people of all colours, ethnic backgrounds, nationalities and religious persuasions have joined in the battle to end modern day slavery,rescue and give safe harbour to it’s victims and prosecute those who profit from the practice.

No one is 100% virtuous, no one is 100% wicked, no one ever was or ever will be. Good people have and will continue to do bad things and bad people have and will continue to do good things. What we consider right and wrong in the 21st century is very different to what was acceptable in the 20th let alone in the centuries stretching back to when slavery was considered acceptable. Would I have supported the enslavement of people if I lived in 17th through 19thth century Britain? I don’t know, maybe I would have, maybe I would have joined the Abolitionist movements, maybe I wouldn’t have cared much as I strove to keep body and soul together. I suspect knowing a small bit of my familial history, especially the Scottish side, I would more than likely have been a candidate for selling into slavery/indentured servitude in the new world or possibly transportation to an Australian penal colony.

I am not a racist, I don’t look at a person and automatically assume I know what they think, believe or how they will act based on the colour of their skin, their features, the name they are known by mainly because I know how it feels to be judged in this way and treated in a negative way based on another person’s lazy stupidity.

I am not responsible for the actions of others now and I am certainly not going to be held accountable for the actions of the long dead just because a racist thinks my being white means I should be.

FORGIVE ME

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I knew my parents weren’t like other parents. Every celebration, every event,every day included an excuse to drink. They met their friends at a bar the way others met up at a coffee shop and no 8 year old should know the phone numbers of those bars by heart ‘just in case’.

I also knew my mother wasn’t like other mothers. I grew up knowing there was something wrong but I didn’t know how to explain or express what was happening that didn’t sound like me complaining ‘It’s not fair’.

As a toddler my brother regularly bit me. One day I ran to my mother crying and bleeding, she stemmed the blood but showed no care or concern for the wound and said if he tried to bite me again I should bite him back. I was three and a half and took her at her word. My father stopped her beating me but was just as angry when he found out I’d tried to bite my little brother. My mother’s explanation for the marks on my arm, he bit me when I tried to bite him. It is still my first vivid memory of what my childhood would be like.

Like many narcissistic mothers she would spread her poison by expressing her ‘concerns’ about me. When the effect of my toxic home life became apparent to the point it couldn’t be ignored, fobbed off or explained as me just being a teenage girl. My mother arranged counselling. I lived by the spoken and unspoken rules for children in abusive families; keep silent, it’s no one’s business but ours, no one will believe you, if they believe you they will know it’s your fault, only tell the version of the truth that can’t be used against your parents, do not betray the family.

These sessions would be with someone she ‘trusted’ so I knew everything I said would find it’s way back to her. I said what people wanted to hear, despite her best efforts to control the process, it looked good on the outside but would do no good on the inside, it would be the start of her undoing.

‘Everyone’ knew I was stupid and I would never amount to anything until I got my head out of the clouds. At one point I was offered an IQ test, the results confirmed what I had always suspected, I was not stupid, in fact I was very intelligent especially regarding creative, imaginative intelligence. My head was exactly where my intellect needed it to be. From the day I got those results onward, no matter how hard she tried to discredit them, she knew she had lost complete control, would never get it back and would continue to lose what control she had left. Her ending came with my beginning to understand her abusive patterns, what they were and how she practised, refined and then honed them like a blade she used to fillet my very being with just a look, gesture or word.

My father died, my mother crawled deeper into a bottle, my brother realised I wasn’t joking when I said I would stab him if he didn’t leave me alone , I went my own way.

It was a way that included Al Anon, other groups, reading, counseling, self help therapies, marriage, divorce,marriage, children and putting a continent and an ocean between us.

Adult children of abusive parents grow up with so many horrendous emotional and psychological burdens. We’re raised with the idea you should love and respect your parents even when you know they are ,at the least, not fulfilling their roles and duties, at worst making your existence a nightmare. We’re raised knowing we are stupid, useless, ugly, hated, a burden, worthless, it’s all our own fault and it’s our job to fix it. We feel guilty and self shame for being angry, resentful and hating the situation we lived in and the people we lived with. My goal had to be to get myself healthy and break the habits that came with the conditioning I had received and example that had be set for me.

A recurring theme of my getting better was forgiveness. I struggled with other people’s definition of what forgiveness is, the pretend it never happened type of forgiveness, the idea that because she gave birth to me so I owed her my forgiveness. I had to forgive her even if; she never recognised what she had done, she never apologised, while visiting she tried to repeat her abuses with my children.

I learned what forgiveness wasn’t, what it could be and what it became to me.

In the weeks before she died she would ring and say things like;

  • she may have been wrong about me

  • maybe she didn’t give me the credit I deserved

  • it was possible she didn’t know me as well she thought she did

  • it could be I wasn’t really just like her I was probably more my own person than she realised.

Every comment was qualified and equivocal and the closest she would ever come to saying ‘I’m sorry’. 10 days after the last conversation she died, it didn’t matter. Did I forgive her? Not really but I had let go of my anger, resentment and even hatred towards her long before that. I’d been over her for a long while knowing she would never love me or I her as we might have.

It took many years for me to understand that my recovery wasn’t just about forgiving her it was also about understanding and internalising the oft repeated phrase, ‘It’s not your fault’.

The hardest lesson to implement was acknowledging I had become my own worst enemy. Perpetuating the the pain and hurt as a self inflicted punishment for betraying my Mother. I had to cultivate a new inner voice, one that spoke calmly, kindly, that didn’t scream and berate with accusations, insults, didn’t minmise, disparage and inflict guilt. A voice that assured me my responses to the cruelty and abuse; anger, a sense of betrayal, resentment, hate, thoughts of vengeance and revenge, was understandable, but, the destructive and/or hurtful behaviours to myself and others weren’t acceptable. Understanding the root of the feelings and how they fueled the actions made it easier to change what I was doing, apologise and mean it where necessary.

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday and the yesterday you can’t change tomorrow. Forgiving myself has allowed me to value the today I have, no longer overshadowed by my yesterdays and and worrying about my tomorrows.

THOSE PEOPLE 4

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CRITICS

I want to mention three sorts of critics.

The Hyper Critic who no matter what will drill in like a dentist on the minutiae of what you have said or done. It doesn’t matter how trivial or obscure the detail is they will rag on it and rag on it like a terrier on a rat. You begin to realise their actions have nothing to do with you it’s all about creating an opportunity for them to talk about what they think and what their opinion is.

They will pull other people in, misquote and misrepresent you and what you have said, so not only do they have a platform they have an audience for what they want to say which is basically a personal attack on you and how the Hyper Critic is right and you are wrong.

The Sniper Critic starts out with you thinking they are going to comment on the opinion, the art, the work, the performance but ends up doing nothing but attacking the person. I remember once reading what was supposed to be a gig review of a well known performer bY a journalist in a respectable, as respectable as they get, newspaper. Three lines in and you realised it was nothing by a vitriolic attack by one woman, the reviewer, on another woman, the performer. 800 venomous words that never mentioned the gig except as a place the writer went.

The Know It All It doesn’t matter what you say or what you do, this person knows better, knows why you are wrong because they know everything about everything. Even if you present them with evidence contrary to what they say, your facts and proof they must and will find a way to remain right.

I don’t mind criticism if it’s warranted. I remember once someone being asked if they had read any of my blog. I knew what was coming so it was no surprise when the person responded they read as much of it as they could stomach and when asked what they thought responded with one word, obnoxious. I do not mind having my work critiqued if the person doing it can show me why they are saying what they are saying and how they think it will help me improve what I’m doing. I do mind when it’s all about attacking the person not commenting on the work.

You often won’t realise you are dealing with one of these until it’s almost too late and you have been sucked into their vortex of negativity and shaming but it’s never too late or too early to sing them the ‘You’re Right’ song ( you’re right, you’re right, you’re very, very right, be happy, be glad and never ever sad becuase you’re very, very right) smile, strike that match, burn that bridge and walk away.

THOSE PEOPLE 3

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THE MISERY

Stay away from negative people, they have a problem for every solution.

Albert Einstein

In my experience there are two basic sorts of Miseries, the Passive and The Active.

The Passive Misery is the person who has that mind set where nothing gives them any joy. It’s hard to know if they are born with this attitude or it is a learned behaviour but it’s like their sunshine is constantly hidden behind a black cloud that hangs over their head. They are the sort of people who’s presence can cause other people’s head’s to drop and shoulders to slump. They automatically find the bad in any good news, their own or other people’s.

‘Congratulations! You’ve just won £5,000,000 on the lottery’

‘I suppose I’ll have to pay taxes on it so most will be gone before I see it.’

or

‘John has booked a holiday in Mexico’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t get sick over there or shot up by drug traffickers’

It’s impossible to get a Passive Misery to see anything but the negative connotation, effects or results of any given situation or action.

Sadly these people tend to be completely unaware of what they are like and the effect they have on people. They don’t understand why people lose patience and lose interest but just accept it is the way life is giving them one more thing to be miserable about.

The Active Misery knows they are miserable, is quite proud of the fact they never think anything good of anyone and see nothing positive in life. Life for them is a hard, harsh place and all their energy is focused on proving it to themselves over and over again and they scan every possible horizon to find things to be miserable about. What’s more if they can’t be miserable for their own sake they will seek out someone or something else they can be miserable for. These are the sort of people who follow tabloid and gossip magazine stories and take up arms on behalf of some C list celebrity because of a supposed insult levelled at them by another C list celebrity.

An off shot of the Active Misery is the Aggressive Misery. Not only are they miserable in their own right but they are determined to make others around them just as miserable. They will do this by; being difficult and disagreeable to get along with, questioning and arguing every little detail in a day, relaying information they think will upset you in some way making you either angry or sad, gossiping about you and even outright personal attacks. Often this sort of thing is done under the guise of ‘For you own good’ because if there is one thing the Aggressive Misery can’t tolerate is the idea of other people not being miserable.

There is not much you can do for A Misery, they either lack the self awareness to know there is a problem or revel in the problem and see no reason to change it. The best thing to do is smile when you strike that match and walk away as that bridge burns.

THOSE PEOPLE 2

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THE ANTI

The ‘anti’ is the ultimate Single Issue Fanatic (SIF), aside from a stray lapel badge or emblazoned t-shirt there are rarely any obvious signs you are about to be cornered by an anti until they are in full flow. Antis have no interests outside of and no topic of conversation besides whatever cause they find their identity from and hold close to their heart. Causes which include but are not restricted to;
abortion
contraception
children:-having,feeding,training,schooling,hands on,hands off  yadda yadda blah blah
being childfree
pets
science
technology
immunisation and vaccination
(animal as well as human)
western medicine
eastern philosophy
Muslims
Jews
Christians
non Christians
God
organised worship
people;
men
women
gay
straight
transgender
of colour, any colour
white
mixed race including relationships from plutonic to romantic
politically left
politically right
liberals
urban people
rural people
farms, farmers and farming
field sports from ferreting and fishing to hunting and stalking
fireworks
cars
money
big business
globalisation
capitalism
communism
government
eating meat
consuming dairy
alcohol
vaping

It doesn’t matter what cause an anti holds dear to their heart there are certain mindsets and behaviours they all seem to share.
Antis don’t like and refuse to accept the world as it is and want to reshape it and they think it should be. This is a scary proposition because antis often sound and behave like teenagers, very spoilt and entitled teenagers.
Antis establish their identity in part if not in total on whatever they are against. They lack the self awareness and introspection necessary to see themselves as an individual not dependant on being part of a group for who they are. Antis will always remind you that they are part of a gang and their gang is bigger and tougher than your gang.
The anti functions in ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ bubbles. Us are the people who agree wholeheartedly, 100% without reservation with the cause, what it means, who’s to blame and how it should be dealt with. Them is anyone else and if you don’t immediately agree with them and their stance you become one of Them, a person to be viewed with suspicion and treated like an enemy of the cause.
Antis don’t do social awareness, they haven’t figured out how to react and modify their behaviour and interactions to produce a good result. Social skills are a mystery to antis who seem to think being loud and abusive is the way to bully people into thinking like them. They certainly don’t do listening.
Antis are always right, completely, totally and unequivocally right, just ask an anti and they will tell you how right they are and how wrong you are.
Antis claim to be politically aware but on closer inspection you realise they think being loud and opinionated is the same as having an understanding of how public policy and agendas are put together, how decisions are reached and put into action. Their understanding of how politics is presented and reported, political bias and the use of propaganda is rudimentary at best.
Added to all this is a Jeremy Kyle interpretation of how one expresses their passion. While most of us progress through our emotions on a topic rather like the family Ford being driven by Dad working our way up through the gears till we reach a reasonable speed the anti goes from 0 to raging like a flappy paddle Ferrari being driven by a boy racer. In anti world if you aren’t yelling, screaming almost rolling your eyes and foaming at the mouth then you obviously don’t care.
If you don’t immediately agree with and support the anti and what they believe to be true, becoming one of them, the first response is to assume you are ignorant about ‘the truth’. You will then be presented with ‘the facts’ You will also be interrogated about why you think differently and why you are so resistant to what is so blindingly obvious to them.
Anti arguments and supporting evidence relies heavily on repetition, rhetoric and hyperbole mainly because closer examination reveals just how little substance there is to these facts and how the information has been manipulated being out of date, out of context and often out and out lies. Since you are one of Them the anti has no problem refusing to consider you may have a point even when you are demonstrating how the material they rely upon and leaders they listen to are incorrect, inaccurate and misrepresenting information.
If you contradict the anti and what they believe, especially if you present evidence to the contrary or show the flaw in their argument, you will be judged ill informed, not understanding the gravity of the situation, lied to, lying to yourself, just plain stupid, some or all of the above.
It goes without saying that everything an anti says and everything they base what they stand for on is completely and totally true and anything to the contrary is false. The only sin worse than disagreeing is not caring. It’s at this point that interacting with an anti moves to anything from uncomfortable, we’ve all tried being polite while moving away, to angry to down right scary.
Antis agree with everything one of ‘Us’ does or says up to and including threats and acts of violence. Their lack of social skills and empathy means they have no problem hurling abuse and insults, making threats of violence and even launching physical attacks against people and property. Those who don’t take part will happily condone, defend and justify the actions of others often resorting to victim blaming because if ‘they would just stop doing what we are against we wouldn’t have to resort to the things we do.’
Most of all antis can not recognise the contradictions and hypocrisies of what they believe, what they stand for and what they do; Anti vaxxers saying they are protecting their children from harm by putting their children at risk because they refuse to accept that Andrew Wakefield’s research and resulting paper were seriously flawed not to mention funded by lawyers hoping to sue the manufacturers of vaccines, recently the vegan anti dairy protestors who describe themselves as peaceful but have threatened farmers and their families including kidnapping children and torturing them to death, the anti government protestors who you’ll never see turning down NHS health care.
For the anti only two things matter, the cause they have invested themselves in and being right even if it means sacrificing honesty, integrity and logic.

DON’T LET YOUR PAST STEAL YOUR PRESENT

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Why do I feel this compulsion to write and blog and vlog?  Like Eric Blair aka George Orwell I always knew I wanted to be a writer and despite detours into the real world the urge and the need to put pen to paper and use words to create, describe, express, question and explain my world never left me. No matter how hard I tried to quash it. I don’t do writing I am a writer. Writing is not a hobby I can put aside when it’s inconvenient and it’s part of who I am.
I grew up in an environment of constant criticism and disparagement.
At home I was stupid, ignorant, childish, naive. Instead of answering questions I was told to stop asking them, instead of showing and teaching I was mocked for not knowing. Most of all it was made clear that no one wanted to hear what I had to say, my thoughts were too stupid to be worth hearing and no one cared what I thought anyway because I was of no worth to anyone except as a figure of fun.
The school system I was educated in had very strict ideas about what constituted good, worthy and worthwhile art. Most of all art in any form had to be acceptable within the confines of the social mores and morals of the school system,comfortable and unchallenging. If you refused to straightjacket your work it was deemed unacceptable and given a failing grade. At the same time you were expected to strive for greatness. The idea of creating art for the sake of expressing yourself or worse still because you simply enjoyed it was almost heretical. If you couldn’t be the next Betjeman, Shakespeare, Lawrence, Olivier, Rockwell or Michelangelo what was the point?  To be an artist you must be want to be ‘successful’ which meant critical acclaim and fame and hopefully wealth.
The weight of these arbitrary rules, expectations and conditions were used to crush budding artistic personalities into conformity.
Combined this with the demons of self doubt and self loathing instilled by my home life and you have a perfect recipe for self sabotaging behaviours.
Which brings me to now.
I have always had the courage of my convictions. I’ve never feared standing up and speaking out for what I believe is right and against what I believe is wrong. It’s time I was as convicted and courageous about myself as I am about other issues. It’s not so easy because I can’t do research or find facts to support this cause but I know what is right is I must continue to string words together to tell stories, to ask questions, to explain my world view. What is wrong is my continuing under the crushing weight of my past which stops me from doing what I am compelled to do.
My work may be for me but it is also for the people who view it, part of creating art in any form is you don’t know what the consequences of putting it out there for people to see. I hope people who encounter my work might be entertained, find something thought provoking maybe even begin to ask their own questions,perhaps I will make someone smile or spur them into action. I’d like to think seeing something I’ve done will help someone not feel so alone or misunderstood and give themselves permission to believe in themselves and their value as a person.
I know I will be judged and there will be people who take pleasure in criticizing others and their work. If people do feel the need I hope they will do so in an educated and knowledgeable way regarding my work and not simply attack for the sake of being negative. I have finally developed the skills to see when an attack is on the person not the work and to give them the short shrift they deserve. I’ve also finally accepted that there really are no rules and you don’t have to confine yourself to the diktats of others. Society will not crumble and the world won’t stop turning because I’ve decided to make it up as I go along according to my own artistic intent and shake off the shackles of my past.

THOSE PEOPLE

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We’ve all met them, that category of people known as ‘Those people’. You know the sort, 5 minutes in and you suddenly think to yourself ‘OMG, you are one of those.’ There are all sorts of them in the world, some easier to deal with than others and some you just need to cross the road to avoid. Some are just annoying while others are down right dangerous. Knowing who they are, how to spot them and how to deal with them can save you all manner of trials and tribulation.

1 The Lickspittle</

lickspittle: noun –  A person who behaves obsequiously to those in power

Let’s talk about is the lickspittle, the insinuator, the toxic little mole that gets into another person’s brain. It might be in your personal life or in your work, you may have seen this happen in your family or a club you belong to it doesn’t matter where you can see it happening as you watch the lickspittle unleash their weapons of choice; flattery, mimicry, sycophancy. You see what happens to a perfectly normal human being once the lickspittle gets in beside them. You notice the first subtle changes as you watch the lickspittle stroke their ego while whispering little things in their ear. Before you know the person who used to know is looking at you differently and treating you differently. If you enquire as to what has changed they can’t really say or may deny anything has changed though you both know it has. You realise that the lickspittle has been feeding them bits of information and there is just enough truth in what they say to make what they are lying about believable. There is very little you can do because the lickspittle is sly and conniving and never says anything via direct statement. It’s always snippets of information, hints and inferences and those little grains of truth inside the lies means you are constantly on the back foot saying ‘Hang on, I didn’t say that ‘ or ‘Hang on, that isn’t what happened’ When caught out the lickspittle will rely on the fact they have so flattered and wheedled their target even rock solid proof will be disregarded in favour of the lickspittle. The target of the lickspittle has no idea what is happening or has happened because it has all been so subtle. There is absolutely nothing you can do until the target realises what has happened, sometimes this moment never arrives. If you find yourself being drawn into a situation with one of those people, either as the target or as an observers of what is happening, the option you my have is to withdraw as much as you can if not completely from the relationship.

It can be even more difficult for the person being groomed by the lickspittle. Like Grima Wormtongue whispering a Theoden’s ear you don’t even realise how you’re being manipulated. It takes great strength of character to not have your head turned when someone is fawning over you and saying all the things you want to hear, especially when they tell you to ignore the people who may be telling you the truth but it isn’t as pretty as the positive strokes of the lickspittles compliments. Suddenly friends, family, people at work are no longer your friends or to be trusted. You view even your nearest and dearest with suspicion and wonder what it is they really want from you. You can only hope that when or if you break free or are dropped because of a new target acquired you can somehow repair the damage done while under the spell of the lickspittle.

Lickspittles are not bothered who gets hurt or what damage they do so long as they get whatever it is they are looking for whether it is power, position, wealth or just the the jollies from feeling like they are in control. You can’t reason with them and they get too much pleasure from what they do to change their ways. They not worth the stress and pain they cause certainly not worth going to jail for, no matter how satisfying gripping them gently by the throat and squeezing would be. They create a situation so toxic the best  recourse you have for self preservation is to walk as far away as possible and not look back.

60 THOUGHTS

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I recently turned 60. It’s a pleasant surprise to me that I have managed to exist on planet Earth for 6 decades without being arrested or committed.
I’d like to think I have used my adventures and interesting times as a learning experience but I make no claims to holding any of that elusive quality known as ‘wisdom’. For some reason it is thought just living so many years somehow instills you with a deeper knowledge of life but the truth is we all know 17 year olds who are said to be wise beyond their years and 70 year olds who still throw teddy from the pram if they don’t get their own way.
I have done my best not to offer unsolicited advice and express unasked for opinions. I have often said nothing letting people think they know what I believe rather than waste energy explaining my point of view.
Now, in honour of hitting 60, bruised, battered and still as stroppy as ever I am offering up 60 Thoughts. These are in no way intended as advice or to be taken as some sort of gospel. They are just my musings on different topics reflecting my experience and the the conclusions I came to that have helped me navigate the different terrain and conditions I’ve encountered while traveling from birth to death. Topics that include ‘NO! Is not a dirty word’, ‘Ignorance isn’t bliss it’s just ignorance’ and ‘Just because it sounds good doesn’t mean it’s true’

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1 – RESPECT YOUR ELDERS

As someone who apparently now qualifies as an elder I feel it’s appropriate for me to address this little platitude used and abused by people who think being older makes them fit to be in charge.
I was 6 the first time I began to cognitively understand that adults weren’t better human beings than children just because they said so. We lived in a flat above a printers shop on Commercial Street in Vancouver. At that time there were several shops with flats above them with scrappy bits of yard and an alley out the back. This is where we played, a milling herd of various children, some from the other flats some from the surrounding area. There was one woman who lived in one of the flats who went out of her way to berate us, often for things we hadn’t done and would have been impossible for us to do like constantly running up and down the stairs and stomping round the veranda just to upset her when we had been at the park all day. One day I was walking towards home with my mother when I saw her walking towards us.
‘That’s her’ I whispered’ that woman who is always mean to us and shouts at us and threatens to hit us’ What followed was a simpering display of mock affection for me and all the other children. I pulled away when she tried to stroke my hair. As we walked away I turned back to see her smugly smiling as if she has just won by getting one over on a 6 year old.
There were other events, large and small, over the next few years. My small child brain couldn’t fully comprehend what I was witnessing but I knew something was off regarding this idea of respecting people who didn’t seem to respect the rules they were trying to enforce on me. The crystallising event for me happened when I was 10 in the Grade 5 Class at what was then Philip Sheffield Elementary in Abbostford. Our teacher was a man who thrived on having 30 captive children he could gas light,manipulate and torture. He had his favourites, his targets and his audience. The school day was filled dread as you knew there would be one or two children targeted for his cruelty from belittling comments to threats of punishment to being punished often in humiliating ways. It could be you that day called out for reasons no one understood and transgressions no one had seen. On this day he decided to make an example of three boys by inflicting corporal punishment on them in front of the class. Two of the boys had committed some transgression that even they weren’t aware of doing. The first boy was chosen because he was always being punished for no other reason than this teacher hated him. He held out his hands to receive 3 blows from the strap on each palm, the leather strap being the mandated weapon of choice for school punishments. He just glared as the teacher struck, harder and harder. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t cry but his look was one of resignation tinged with hatred. This infuriated the teacher which made it worse for the two other innocent victims of his ire. This grown man put all his weight and strength into striking the palms of ten year old boys with a stiff leather strap as thick as a doubled up belt. By the time the third victim was being punished the classroom was in chaos, the two boys were screaming, children in the class were crying, some were just this side of hysterical, a couple were hysterical, at least one threw up and then one of his pets, a small quiet girl stood up and passed out. Then he started screaming at us, that some how it was our fault for him having to punish the boys and deciding to do it in front of us. I watched him and the unfolding chaos until at some point the principle finally came in, removed the teacher and screaming boys from the room and tried to restore some sort of order to the scene. That teacher never regained control of his class, no amount of trying to be kind and friendly made up for what we had witnessed, we behaved because we feared him but even his favourites were wary after that.
I never told my parents the full extent of what happened. In my mind they were no better and just as complicit in the lie as he was. They,their friends,teachers and pretty much all adults maybe older but they were not better than me. The idea that being older made you smarter, wiser was a lie and they did not deserve the respect they kept demanding of me. Though I never said it out loud my stance became and remains if you want my respect show me you are worthy of it.
My mind has never been changed. Through out my life even as an adult in my 30s and 40s people have claimed I needed to show them respect because they are older than me all while holding forth in stupidity and ignorance expecting me to just comply with what they believed and upset when I had the audacity to contradict what they were saying and/or doing.
There have been some people who I have come to respect and admire. The irony is they are never the ones demanding my respect because of their age. They command my respect because of the people they are and how they live their lives.
It is their example I have tried to follow being the older person who will listen, explain, discuss, not make assumptions or think I must be right because I am older.
Should we respect our elders? I think we should show all people of every age the same sort of respect we would hope they would show us. The more relevant point is should elders be the sort of person that can be respected? If you think being older automatically makes you worthy and that people of less years should defer to you then you don’t actually deserve the respect you crave.
For my part, I don’t want to be respected simply because I’ve managed to not die, though all things considered for me not getting dead is a pretty impressive achievement. Instead I’d like to think people respect me because I’m a person who can be looked up to even if you don’t have to look up that high.