A Chance To Change
As members of the human race, we’re bound to get caught up in misunderstandings between ourselves and others. We’re bound to confuse intentions - to be hurt. And to stay silent when it all just gets to much rather than just talk it through.
I moved to England recently from Australia. I moved here for my own professional reasons, but it was a reprieve from things that were going on at home. These misunderstandings clouding my judgment, and cramping my style. It was conveniently timed.
The fact that we are not honest and open with each other is so upsetting in a world where we really ought to be. Where hatred for people and unfairness is shown in the news every day, and we shake our heads at it asking “what has the world come to?” I ask, instead, “where did this world come from?” This world, the state of this world in its closed off approach to the human race as a whole entity that was made to celebrate and express kindness to one another, falling so deeply into a state of animosity that we don’t recognise or remember the old.
We shake our heads. I see myself as a good person. An upstanding and polite person, an example of a community-centric soul who is a beacon for good behaviour and living. Sounds wanky? Well maybe it is. Maybe it is because I, inadvertently most of the time, have caused pain and suffering to people. There were times I was too chicken shit to say “hey, R U OK?”, or “hey, I didn’t even think about how you might be feeling that was a dick move and I’m sorry.” In the end, we’re all selfish to one extent or another. We wake up thinking “how am I going to have a good day” rather than “today is a day to make someone’s day”.
You can probably tell I am frustrated by my actions and inactions which have caused me to write this. This is a cryptic way to be honest with you - to tell you that I have been dumb and in silence, I have hurt others. Dick move. I was thinking when going through moments of miscommunication “how can I stop the hurting I am feeling?” I could have thought “how can I stop the hurting we are feeling?”
And that is the entire world’s problem. “How can we stop the hurt we are feeling?” is the question we need to ask. We need to wake up and say “Today is a day to make someone’s day.”
And you know what? A week, three weeks, three months, a year - time is irrelevant. Apologise, talk, say what you need to say even if you regret not having said it earlier. Ask that person “hey, R U OK?”
In the words of Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia:
Real mates talk straight.
