Chaos & simplicity

I have been thinking recently of the words we say and how they must hold meaning, if we are to survive.

I have been thinking of a friend I made during the early months of the pandemic. We coined a term to refer to the times we might not respond to each other as ostriching. As in, we care very much and hope each other is well, but putting our heads in the sand and gasping for air is the best we can do at the minute until we find our way back to the surface.

I have been thinking about a speech that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave once, a favourite of mine and whose words I have come back to as we’ve navigated the pandemic and all of the horror, all of the numbness and pain and all of the things that we have pushed aside and refused to grapple with only for them to come back to haunt us in another form. 

I read her speech again recently, and was struck by a few lines which seem remarkably apt as we stare down the barrel of a continuing health crisis on multiple fronts, the barrel of climate change and widening inequity, the barrel of the growing conservatism that is already hard at work strengthening and solidifying the fissures in our society.

“We have still seen a growing sense of isolation, dislocation, and a sense of insecurity and the erosion of hope.

As politicians and governments, we all have choices in how we respond to these challenges. 

We can use the environment to blame nameless, faceless ‘other’, to feed the sense of insecurity, to retreat into greater levels of isolationism. Or we can acknowledge the problems we have and seek to fix them.”

That last line struck me today, because four years after that speech we seem to be collectively ostriching.

We haven’t stopped caring. Rather there is so much to care about that it’s numbing, immobilising, overwhelming. It is the result of our own actions in some cases and deliberately engineered in others but the bottom line is that we are collectively heads down, trying to breathe without pain.

I don’t think we’re disconnected - we’re trying to work out how to connect. We’re trying to reconcile what we know to be true and the values we hold with the systems that we know aren’t working and the policies that no longer do right by us all. 

“It should hardly come as a surprise that we have seen a global trend of young people showing dissatisfaction with our political systems, and calling on us to do things differently – why wouldn’t they when they themselves have had to adapt so rapidly to a changing world.”

The dissatisfaction is obvious in young people for whom belonging to each other is inherent and who demand nothing less for their existence - and it echos across the generations who know what it means to be separated from equity, justice, belonging, community by those for whom that separation and loss won’t ever occur.

Whatever you think about giving 16 year olds the vote, we can’t deny that the decisions we have made as their supposed elders have overwhelmingly not been for their benefit and have shaped a dire future they continue to have no say in.

“There is a grinding reality in hearing someone from a Pacific island talk about where the sea was when they were a child, and potential loss of their entire village as an adult.

Our action in the wake of this global challenge remains optional. But the impact of inaction does not.”

Our stories make us who we are. The stories we discount or twist or thwart when they should be heard are the stories that will come back to haunt us because we refused to grapple with them the first time.

The impact of inaction in this pandemic, in this relentless moment of stark climate change will haunt us. The impact of centering political convenience over the lived experience and expert advice both desperately trying to warn us about the tidal waves that are coming will haunt us.

“And if we want to ensure anyone is better off, surely it should be the most vulnerable.”

We talk a lot about the vulnerable but we don’t often talk about the powerful. For my money, if your time is spent ensuring that the voices of people who don’t have your privilege are intimidated, harassed, spoken about in a derogatory way, their protections and their support systems abolished, their rights dismissed, in service to the people who also have your privilege and perspective, then you’re one of the reasons people put their heads in the sand, because they cannot stand the sight of you.

When in service to the vulnerable we should be challenging the powerful, especially the words that they say, if we are going to survive. 

“We must rediscover our shared belief in the value, rather than the harm, of connectedness.”

My friend is someone who is not vulnerable easily. She is the person for whom this image was absolutely made and who would vehemently deny it if she ever saw this (no one show her.)

We are made stronger by our connections. We may turn to ostriching and bury our heads in the sand out of fear or exhaustion or avoidance or sheer overwhelm but the thing that draws us back, always, are the things we see in each other that make the surface the preferred option. It’s those things that make us seek a light that sometimes we forget is seeking us, too.

“Perhaps then it is time to step back from the chaos and ask what we want. It is in that space that we’ll find simplicity.”

I’ll meet you on the surface. 

“In New Zealand, going it alone is not an option.”

- Jacinda Ardern, 2018

Cover image credit: "Light chaos" by kevin dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.