When did we decide we aren’t worthy of change?
A loved one, who is no longer a loved one, said this to me once as I put a boundary in place around behaviour they were displaying towards me that was unhealthy:
“What is wrong with you?”
They couldn’t understand that the way they were behaving was toxic and harmful and, because I was no longer willing to tolerate it, because I was asking to be treated differently their explanation for this shift was this:
They couldn’t do it - and something was deeply wrong with me for asking.
People who are unwilling to do the work, whether the motivating factor is shame or ego or fear will often find every excuse under the sun not to change; will tie themselves in knots - will burn the house down with you inside in order to avoid looking at their own reflection.
There is a brilliant line by James Baldwin: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
We numb that pain with our hate and with our indifference to each other and recently it made me wonder, for those of us on the receiving end, how we get to a place of demanding something better for ourselves.
This last two years of our lives has been an exercise in worldwide collective gaslighting.
It’s mild.
We need you to keep working.
Business is King.
Experts are liars.
You are not worthy of our protection, our determination, our raw and screaming Herculean efforts to save you from the maw of this overwhelming beast.
You are not worthy of the human consideration that should be held sacred.
“You cannot legislate for people to not feel ill and nor can you legislate away how long they are infectious for.”
This for me sums up a curious, consistent theme from governments - “live with it.”
In New Zealand, we have benefitted enormously from a functioning government, a leader who is undeniably bloody good at her job, and a team who work cohesively together. (Pretty sure this should really be a minimum requirement - but we know all too well that it is definitely not a guarantee.)
But, even now there are things that we could easily do that we are choosing not to. That we are consistently being told we have to “live with” - but why?
The thing about fundamental change is that we have already been trained to accept that there is a finite budget, an invisible and moving goalpost, a policy proposal that will never pass go because it’s not possible.
We talk in half measures.
They did xyz thing… even if they didn’t do abc like we’ve been raising our voices about for years.
We are trained to “look over here” and ignore red flags which is an appalling way to live because this is also what happens in toxic and abusive relationships.
Only, the red flags here are missing policy and ignored voices. It is being told we must “live with” things we know to be deeply unjust.
When did we all decide we aren’t worthy of change?
Jonny Sun recently wrote movingly of his experience of trying a new method of watering his plants and how, with deeper nourishment, they thrived.
What would happen if we expected loudly, unequivocally, that all policies weren’t shallow trickles of water but deep nourishment - the difference between surviving and thriving?
It is consistently amazing to me that in a world that has achieved a fairly considerable amount in its history, we have decided that radical change is beyond us.
In a world where, for a brief moment, nature was healing, mountain goats returned, and an evolved perspective on how to deal with each other seemed imminent, it seems to have swung back the other way.
We’re going to be voting again, soon.
I wonder what would happen if we expected that genuinely transformational policy was on the agenda from all of the people asking for our votes.
There might not be a literal asteroid headed our way (yet) but between climate change, rampant inequity and Covid-19, we’re not exactly living in a day spa, here.
(Maybe in a pot, as frogs.)
For me in 2022, I’m going to do my best to call out behaviour that undermines our urgent need for change, and undermines the relationship we should have with our government - which includes ignoring inequity, failing to move the dial on climate change, and refusing to consider policy change that will help during one of the worst pandemics on record.
My loved one once asked me to live with their behaviour, and was aghast at being asked to behave in a way that made our relationship healthy. They pointed to all of the great qualities they had and glossed over the things that eventually ended our connection.
They wanted me to live with their behaviour.
There is nothing wrong with us for wanting to be heard, and for things to change.