19 Nov 2012
About ten years ago in Canberra, my baby brother was riding his motorcycle to work in the afternoon, when a car failed to give way properly and cleaned him up. It was a horrible accident leaving him with significant injuries and a stint in intensive care followed by a heap of rehab. It just so happened that in a car travelling a little way behind my brother, was a man who knew my Dad and our family. He stopped to help at the accident, recognised my brother when his helmet was removed and immediately called my Dad. My Dad took the call from a meeting in Melbourne, heard the news and called Mum at home, who leapt in the car and drove up to the accident. She almost beat the ambulance.
The marvel at the time was the speed with which the information was shared thanks to mobile phones, and while horrible for Mum to see her baby boy in that condition, she was able to travel with him to the hospital and be with him while they pinned him, stitched him, patched him and all those things that a bandaid and kiss from Mum just weren’t going to fix on this occasion.
The news spread as his siblings were told, then friends, and so on. People rallied behind him and behind the family offering support in a myriad of different ways. All of them overwhelmingly positive and valued. Community at its very best.
A while after the accident the driver of the car rang to apologise. He spoke to Mum and she asked of him, as she had asked the universe a million times, how could you not see him? He wasn’t speeding, it was broad daylight and it’s a big bike? The man replied ‘I did see him, I thought I could beat him’. What my mother heard was ‘I drove into your beloved baby boy deliberately’. She raged. I get that. I got it then and I get it even more now that I have my own children. I still maintain that the driver did the right thing by apologising, by owning his actions, even if he got the apology so horribly wrong.
The reason I write about this is a story I read online yesterday about an accident uncanny in its similarity to my brother’s accident. Except, due to social media, photos were shared of the accident within minutes, some of the family found out via facebook as the parents hadn’t had a chance to call everybody as they were at the hospital with their son. Some ‘friend’ noted the registration of the car that hit the bike and tracked the guy down and a harrassment and hate campaign started towards the driver, calling for him to be run over, his family hurt and so forth. And all within a couple of hours of the accident.
This is so very very wrong. This is not an example of community at its best and its not helpful for the family. Whatever the split second decision, or momentary distraction was that meant the driver hit the bike, it was an accident. A horrible, horrible accident but one I am sure he would take back if he could. Accidents come about generally because of a series of small incidents that culminate in an event. Accidents have impact, accidents generally have a root cause but they are still accidents.
Accidents take time to assimilate. The driver needs to work out what he did. The rider needs to heal. The family needs to grieve, to rage, to worry. The police need to work out what happened and files charges accordingly. As a society, we need to stop validating this mob mentality where we judge and sentence people without knowing the full story. We need to give people the opportunity to apologise. We need to give the law a chance to work. Of course it takes time and when you are hurting, your friends or family are hurting, it is natural to want justice to move more quickly – but without the constraint of due process, we are no better than we should be.
A girlfriend of mine once said “good people can make bad decisions and do bad things, it doesn’t change who they fundamentally are”. As she had been at the receiving end of the bad decisions of somebody else, the words resonated with me and have stayed with me. Because they are true.
Most of us are good people. Most of us have made decisions that haven’t worked out so well. Most of us are lucky that they haven’t resulted in injury to others. And it would do us all good to remember that. The driver in the second accident is, on the law of averages, probably a good person who made a dreadful mistake. Let him own his actions, work up to an apology. The apology wont change anything, but the mistake is his. Starting hate and harassment campaigns, revving up a mob mentality – that’s just a different example of how good people make bad decisions.
Our online communities should be the same positive and supportive force in our lives as the old fashioned communities. Their reach should enable that support to be more widespread, more diverse, but should always, always, be used as a means for good.
That is all.
16 Nov 2012
You can keep your morning boot camps, your Fitness First memberships, your morning walks with the dog – I am absolutely convinced that if I paid people to take my girls shopping it would become the world’s most challenging fitness regime.
Take yesterday’s trip to Kmart. Yes. Kmart.
Place smallest weight (approximately 7-8 kilograms) into trolley seat. Place larger weight (approximately 16 kilograms) into the trolley at large. Ensure trolley has one dodgy wheel so you have to push to the right the whole trip to ensure you don’t just do left leading circles. If we were in a fancy gym and I was charging you for this exercise, I’d call it resistance training.
Set off at brisk pace (cardio) in vain attempt to distract the weights from the fact that they are in a shop. Obviously not fast enough. Larger weight sways from side to side in desperate attempt to leap from moving trolley. Remember that dodgy wheel and compensate the swaying of your trolley accordingly. (Full body resistance training)
Get to shoe aisle – do forward lunge (good for your butt apparently) to catch larger weight hurling themselves over the front of the trolley. Lower gently to the floor being careful not to indulge in momentary urge to let them fall. Find the right pair of shoes for them. Do series of bend and squats to pick up everything larger weight has removed from shelves while waiting.
Push trolley with lighter weight towards to the homewares section to find pegs and a new dishbrush. Do twist and push as you walk ensuring you keep the dawdling larger weight in view while not allowing trolley to veer left.
Do two large and quick sidesteps into aisle to grab necessities and then back again. Realise larger weight has now vanished from sight. Do quick sprint in one direction, pivot and run in other direction before locating larger weight hiding in the men’s shorts. Remove said weight bodily tucking under one arm and returning to pushing trolley with smaller weight.
Eventually realise this is not going to work but ensure all muscles are pushed to maximum weight bearing capacity before lowering weight gently to ground. Have larger weight streak ahead. Keep up with lighter weight as you head towards the toy section. Have lighter weight hurl your purse out of trolley. Break, spin, squat, retrieve, lose sight of larger weight. Spring with trolley. Stop. Realise that you actually can’t find child. Sprint up and down large aisle before finding larger weight conversing with Dora’s backpack. Pile larger weight into trolley, strap in and carry lighter weight under one arm while pushing trolley to front counter. Self serve and leave. 45 minutes into what would have been a 5 minute stroll sans children.
Absolutely frickin’ buggered.
Then get ‘health questionnaire’ on your email when you get home asking if you do enough ‘formal exercise’ (because otherwise you’ll get fat and die leaving your little babies all alone in the world.)
I raise my glass of wine (large of course, no need to stop the informal weight bearing and repetitive exercises) and say ‘Fuck off’ out loud. Because I’m like that.
12 Nov 2012
I really really really wish there was no violence.
I know this is not a realistic approach to the real world but that’s the great thing about wishing for a better world. Violence wouldn’t be an option and so people would have to find an alternate way to express rage, frustration or feel powerful.
The thing I find most baffling about so much violence is the why? I can’t comprehend how one individual can bash a child, maim an animal, torture an innocent, beat a loved one, kick a stranger in the head, rob a wounded man, or any of the other myriad of cruelties that people enact. I find gratuitous violence the most baffling because there is no instinctive response to danger, a desire to protect, it’s just petty hyped up nastiness.
And I wonder where does it come from? I don’t think its television, or video games or anything like that…its existed for all time and it is not restricted to one race, one culture, one gender. It’s a visceral thrill for some. A sober experience where they get off on the power with nary a thought for their victims or a damn for the consequences.
You can not stop it. You can not change the fundamentals that make such behaviour acceptable to some. I can comprehend crimes of passion, the red hot surge of anger that makes you want to lash out. Even Mother Theresa admitted to feeling angry – but not everybody acts on it. I just don’t understand wilful violence. And I don’t understand how people can stand by when it happens Surely that makes you just as culpable?
I know I’m a bleeding heart. And I have in the past been slightly embarrassed about my propensity to feel for people I don’t even know, but surely mine is not a bad approach to life. If I can imagine the consequences, feel on behalf of another, that empathy is a good thing? I’m not perfect by any stretch – I’m notoriously hot headed. I profane and I can lash out verbally and have been known to shake with rage but ultimately, bar the odd reactive face slap to the petty mind games of an ex-boyfriend – for which almost 15 years on I still feel incredibly remorseful, I have never had the slightest inclination to deliberately and systematically hurt somebody.
And I would hate to be that person.
Surely an inability to comprehend violence is a desirable state. For while I acknowledge mine is a fairly non eventful middle class anglo-esque life, I am passionate about causes and I truly desire to see change in the world. I’m prepared to march, sign petitions, have conversations, take part in causes but I do not see how violence can effect sustainable change. Maybe I’m naive but perhaps I don’t want to be anything else.
Some questions, some desires are instinctive. My instinct is for a non-violent world. And if I have to start at the beginning with a world that contains no physical violence, I would consider it a small step for man and a giant step for mankind.
11 Nov 2012
There is a saying that friends come into your lifetime for a reason, a season or a lifetime and I think it is very true. Each are important and it is possible to miss a friendship for much longer than it lasted. However, there is something to be said for old friends, the lifetimers.
Some people say that the benefit of a lifetime friend is that they’ve known you through all the ups and downs and while there is a certain truth to that, that very knowledge can limit their understanding of the person you’ve become. The flip side is the joy of conversations started midway. Every time you see them. You haven’t seen them for a while, and before you know it you are sitting in a half busy bar near your old college in your home town thrashing out the world’s problems, creating perfect solutions to your own messes and pontificating like an expert on all aspects of their life and yours.
And they don’t get offended by a sentence imperfectly imparted as long as the intention is good. They don’t comment on your ageing or outfits because you don’t notice those things after the bubble skirts and ripped jeans and big glasses of the 80s and 90s. Quite frankly, anything you are wearing these days is a vast improvement.
But they know that there is always part of you that is going to be pleased that you finally grew boobs, and you know that they worry about turning into their mother more than most. You look at what they have achieved and you are so very proud of them and they look at you and wonder if you’re ever going to work out what you’re doing with your life. And there is a comfort in that.
And vegemite – well thats like an old friend. You might not have vegemite sandwiches all the time, but making them for a road trip and pulling them out of the bag all squished and consuming them two thirds of the way through the journey is immensely satisfying. And seeing the vegemite smeared faces of your little people in the backseat. Well that is priceless. Just like old friends.
6 Nov 2012
In my utopian world, there would be no social climbing. Not even in really expensive shoes.
It would be safe to assume that social climbers have a latin based horticultural name that encompasses ‘an overall decorativeness cloaking viciously thorned, tenacious climbing roots’. Like ivy or wisteria, flaws can be concealed beneath a benign and attractive exterior and the damage caused by their relentless climb towards the sky can remain undetected for quite a while.
The tragedy of social climbers is that so often they have, as most people do, a fundamental sweetness about them, a broad appeal to the masses. They have ambition, a zest for life and are rarely stupid. However, they become so fixed on the climb that they become careless of those that nuture them or allow them opportunity. In the times ‘ye olden’ social climbers were often ambitious mothers with a view to improving the lot of their daughters (and the wider family) through matrimony, but the modern social climber is invariably found within the workplace.
Social climbers are cruelly careless of the ethics and expectations of others and carefully cultivate relationships with people they see as advantageous. They hoard credit and apportion blame. They tend towards one close frenemy or no known associates within their work habitat freeing them to big note themselves or patronise as appropriate and they are ruthless with anybody expressing sentiment or genuine feeling, crowing that professionalism and ambition are better bedfellows than ethics or kindness. They are destructive in that they prey on the insecurities of those around them.
In a utopian world, the social climber would be denied the environmental conditions to flourish. Individual contributions might not be measured in terms of heirarchy or power or wealth but rather through demonstrated values and a genuine commitment to doing good work and being supportive of their colleagues. Those would be the ones to move up through the ranks. Leading by example, the gentle loyalties and integrity would rate higher than the lick-arse antics of the social climber.
It’s a fundamental flaw in the modern workplace that social climbers are more often recognised by management then their quieter counterparts. It is also a flaw that those among us that lack the courage to publicly challenge the social climber are complicit in their upward journey. Our silent support of the quieter colleague should be vocal, our support should be documented and repeated. For like all injustice in the world, to say nothing is to enable it.
It is said that to walk a mile in somebody’s shoes is to better recognise their journey. In a workplace where you might treat people judged on the price of their shoes or the title on their business card it is worth remembering that there are many around you who will do the journey barefoot having lent their Christian Louboutins to somebody else.
5 Nov 2012
I had a bit of hiatus from some of the sites, blogs, pages and so on that I regularly follow over the weekend. And not because any of them said or did anything nor was I feeling exhausted from being constantly connected to information – but rather I had ‘comment rage’.
I had started following the facebook pages of the asylum seekers on Nauru and I was sickened by the comments and abuse being hurled about by people. For a bit of light relief, I clicked onto a story about Adele’s new baby boy and I was appalled by the horrid comments about her weight and her pregnancy. I went and read some articles on a news site and couldn’t believe the nastiness people were dishing out about people so spectacularly bereft by the unexpected loss of a child.
And these weren’t dedicated trolls. These were one off comments mostly by people expressing their opinion and moving on to spread their poison elsewhere. And it genuinely distresses me that people are so nasty or so defiantly apathetic and with so little thought. So inured in their life approach of not caring that they can smash people down with a careless comment or two and then go about their life probably not even giving the horridness another thought. Yet they put their names and faces to it and leave it there in cyberspace to be read and reread by hundreds, thousands of others. Casual nastiness is no less damaging or hurtful then sustained and deliberate nastiness.
By the end of Friday I was agitated – genuinely and considerably agitated – by the negativity I had absorbed through the comments sections. And I wanted that to go.
Change begins with I. I truly believe that. I try to maintain the rage in a proactive and useful way by talking about issues, standing up for what I believe in, not being a passive bystander when bigotry or nastiness is perpetuated but I had the weekend off.
And probably nobody noticed but I’m back, fired up and ready to try and change the world one small suburban step at a time.
