Life Goes On....

How resiliant are you? 

Life doesn't tend to be a "bed of roses". There are so many idioms about this - "a dogs life", "as you sow so shall you reap", "calm before the storm", "come rain or shine", "get a life", "a taste of your own medicine"... We all need to be able to deal with the good & bad days, the kindness & cruelty of life & other people. 

Some people have to cope with far more though. Some people are tested to the limits of endurance. The bandwidth of adversity is extremely wide. From unkind, cruel or bigoted speech to physical harm & even murder & genocide. Until we have to face adversity we really don't know how well we will cope. I imagine most of us hope that we will deal with whatever happens well, with consideration for others & care for ourselves.

Life really does go on. We cling to existance in the most adverse of circumstances. The great driver is to continue to live. 

In todays unstable world I really wish that there was more understanding, empathy & human kindness & a lot less judgement, self absorbtion & protectionism. When we are faced with "bad actors", (people or organizations responsible for actions that are harmful, illegal, or morally wrong), I wish we all had more moral courage to speak out & take action against them. It seems to me that we increasingly manage to compartmentalise what we see & know. We tell ourselves that our actions won't make a difference, that it's someone elses responsibility, that we will make matters worse...So nothing is done & the "bad actors" win by default.

This is true at a micro & macro level. If someone says or does something that I think is untrue, offensive  or harmful & I do nothing, I am jointly responsible in allowing that to continue. If we as a nation see what is happening at a macro level internationally & do nothing, we are perpetuating evil & discrimination.

The really sad thing is that it is a repeating pattern. We even ignore the lessons of  recent history. We repeatedly say "this must never be allowed to happen again" when we are forced, by evidence, to face up to the consequences of our inaction. Other people are seriously harmed.

There have been so many Public Enquiries in the UK - Covid, The Post Office, Contaminated Blood....Wikipedia has a huge list. There have also been political documentaries like the BBC "Corridors of Power - Should America Police the World"  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020xmq  looking into what happened in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur, Libya, Syria - Repeated failure to act, over & over again.

We are now doing it again. Unbelievably Syria has continued since 2011. The first Sudanese war lasted from 1955 -1972. The current one has continued for 17 months. What is happening in Ukraine seems likely to go on for as long as Putin is in power. The situation in Gaza & the West Bank has rumbled on for decades, but currently is by far the worst. 

For millions of people life doesn't go on & we just watch on our TV's & smart phones.