To start off, my name is S. I am a proud Canadian woman. I have a
good life, I’ve been lucky, I come from a good family. I’ve had my share of
struggles in life, but I’ve survived and I’m grateful for all that I have. That
being said, I feel the need to write about the things that keep me up at night.
The moral issues, and the struggles of everyday individuals, of my mother who
works incredibly hard to help people and aid them in recovering from their
illnesses. My mother who is a registered nurse and works as frontline staff to
a failing health care system. I’m writing for the immigrant worker who comes to
America to live the American dream, to provide for his family, and give his
wife, his children a better life. I’m writing for the young girl whose mother
was limited by the colour of her skin, whose grandparents were there that day,
at the March on Washington on August 28th, 1963 when Martin Luther
King Jr. said, “I have a dream…”. I’m writing for that young girl who wants to
be a scientist, or a doctor, or an astronaut, and who should be able to do any
of those things, who doesn’t deserve to be told she can’t, who is limited by
others because she is a young girl of colour. I’m writing for the teenage boy
who feels that he can’t show vulnerability, because he’s had it beaten into him
that men don’t cry, to “take it like a man”. I’m writing for the young women
who is made to feel like a freak because she may have been born with the
anatomical parts of a man but is a woman and always has been in her heart and
her mind, that’s who she is, a woman. I’m writing for the middle-aged Muslim
woman who can’t get hired because she wears a hijab, who is made to feel lesser
than because she’s a minority woman. A woman who represents the face of a
terrorist in the minds of those who stereotype and overgeneralize for an entire
ethnicity, and an entire religion, when the horrendous acts were committed by a
select few individuals. I’m writing for the kid who is haunted by their own
demons, who has a mental illness, but is treated like an outcast, like someone
with the plague, because mental illness is like a dirty word, a dark stain on
someone, that cannot be talked about. Because despite that kid being kind, or
funny, or intelligent, they are defined as someone who is insane, when they are
simply unwell, and they should be defined by so much more than just a mental
illness. Those are the people I want to write for, and most of them are people
I don’t know, people I can’t even begin to comprehend what its actually like to
live their lives. And, that’s the thing, we need to be empathetic, we need to
be understanding. But part of understanding is knowing that unless you have
been through exactly what they have been through, you will never truly
understand. So, I can’t pretend that I will ever know what its like to live
life as a woman of colour, or a bullied teen, or an individual from the LGBTQ+
community, I will never know, but I can promise you that I will try my absolute
hardest to understand that mindset, their lived experience. I think we need
empathy in these times, we need to realize that we are not all the same, every
single individual on this planet has a different experience, has their own
viewpoint, their own ideas, beliefs, opinions, their own struggles, their own
triumphs, and that’s okay. Because difference shouldn’t be an ugly thing, a
terrifying thing. Because it’s not.
A teacher of mine told me that in Denmark, and Norway (I believe?
I’m not 100% sure), individuals of colour have the highest likelihood of
homelessness. He said that in the downtown centers, they kneel in front
of the people that pass by, the white individuals, and they beg for money. And,
that has stayed in my mind for weeks on end. And that’s what the world does,
doesn’t it? There always has to be a superior and an inferior. But how could we
have it so wrong? At first, I thought angrily to myself that if I saw that
happening, I would shove one of those people passing by, someone acting like
the beggar was inferior to them because of their socioeconomic status, because
of the colour of their skin, I thought I would shove them onto their knees.
Then I thought I would get on my knees, because of guilt, I guess. But, neither
of those acts do any good, do they? Because it doesn’t solve anything.
This is what I want to say: No one should be made to feel inferior
because of the colour of their skin. No one should be feeling superior or be
made to feel inferior based on that, based on race, or ethnicity, or religion,
or gender, or sexuality, or socioeconomic status, or age. Those aren’t criteria
that should put anyone on a pedestal over another, just because one variant on
those categories is seen as better than the other. The right thing would be to
give someone kneeling your hand and pull them up to their feet, so you stand
together, neither feeling superior or inferior to the other. And that being said,
it doesn’t change the fact that one person is more disadvantaged than the
other, not at all. Because I’m predominantly white (25% aboriginal), I have
more privileges, more opportunities, more advantages than a woman of colour
would. Because I’m a woman, I would be at a slight disadvantage when being
compared to a white man. There is discrimination, and intolerance, and bias,
and there are horrendous acts committed against individuals because of religion,
sexuality, race, and ethnicity. And, I would never minimize that. But, no one
should think of themselves as better because they see themselves as being part
of some superior race, or religion, or culture. Because those categories I
listed, those are NOT criteria that should make someone feel superior or
inferior to the other. What does make someone inferior then, you may ask? In my
mind, its people who lack morality, people who hurt other people, who ruin
lives whether physically or emotionally, people who commit atrocities, people
who go their entire lives thinking they are on some sort of pedestal, thinking
they can hurt people, discriminate against people, bully people, and get away
with it because they see themselves as superior or as some sort of god. Those,
those are the people who are lesser than, because they are abusive, or violent,
or bullies, or negligent.
What we need to do is change our way of thinking. Which is a lot
harder than you might think, I mean look at the world, we’ve had racist
ideologies that are deeply rooted across hundreds of years of history. Another
teacher of mine made it clear that racism can’t be reduced to individual
prejudices, or individual attitudes, which is completely true. We need to
address the structures, the institutions in society that disadvantage and
discriminate against individuals because of race, ethnicity, culture, etc. And,
even I’m not exactly sure how we do that. But I think a start would be to
change that ideology, change that idea in our heads that a certain skin colour,
a certain nationality, a certain set of beliefs and practices, a certain
gender, a certain sexual preference, a certain age, equals less value, less acceptance,
equals lesser than. Because difference isn’t scary, it shouldn’t be, and it
isn’t. We are all human, aren’t we? We all have thoughts, ideas, opinions,
beliefs, don’t we? We all have feelings, we all feel emotions; love, jealousy,
anger, sadness, joy, disappointment, hope, don’t we? We all have a body, a
mind, a heart, don’t we? We are all just living our lives, trying to get by the
best we can. So, why does such a small difference in appearance, or belief, or
anatomy, have to become such a terribly scary thing? So, why don’t we change
that? Because if we take a closer look, if we open our eyes a little more, we
might just see that that idea, that opinion, that difference, that seemed
completely impossibly to be reconciled in our brains, that difference that
seemed like a terrifying thing… that difference really isn’t that scary. It’s
really not a canyon that someone has to cross, its really just a step. That
difference isn’t that scary, in fact it’s not even that big of a deal, because
we’re all humans, we are all people. And most differences shouldn’t divide us,
we should embrace the fact that we have minds that have different ideas, and
opinions, and beliefs, and we have bodies that come in all different shapes,
sizes, and colours, with beating hearts that feel a whole different range of
emotions. We all live our lives, we all make mistakes, and have struggles and
obstacles in our way, and have our triumphs, our own purpose, and that should
unite us.
So, why don’t we change our way of thinking? Let’s start with that,
and then let’s fix the systems that are failing us, lets restructure these institutions,
lets innovate and create new and better systems. Let’s pass policies and bills
and acts, that make our countries better to live in, more equitable, more
successful, more just. Governments, healthcare systems, education systems,
businesses; we can make adjustments to them all to improve the lives of those
who are disadvantaged by them. We can create countries that support the
American dream, the Canadian dream, really just the dream of any individual
dreaming and searching for a better life. Someone who wants to be able to put
food on the table for their family, who wants a good education for themselves
or their children, who wants to live a healthy lifestyle and not lose their
life to an illness that with the right healthcare, could have been treated,
someone who wants to be accepted, be empathized with, and be welcomed into a
country that treats them with kindness, compassion, respect, and simple human
dignity.
We need to make changes, we need to make changes in the way we
think, the way we act. We need to change the way institutions in society are
run. We need to have empathy. And we need to stop looking at difference as a terrible
thing. We need to stop being afraid. And we need to stop being afraid to speak
up, to speak out when something isn’t right. And some of the things that are
happening in the world right now, are NOT right. And we need to make changes,
we need to stop seeing everyone who thinks, feels, looks, or acts differently
as the enemy. Because that’s only going to divide us further. The enemy doesn’t
come in a specific race, or gender, they don’t follow a specific religion, they
don’t have a specific way of living their life or a specific ideology. The
enemy seeps into our minds, it makes us think that the enemy is our neighbor,
or a group of people, or the country next to us. It makes us question things,
it makes us act irrationally, it makes us do things that we wouldn’t normally
do, it makes us distrustful, it makes us angry, it makes us spiteful, it
sometimes even makes us commit terrible acts. The enemy isn’t an individual, it
isn’t human, but it is a human trait, a human emotion. The enemy is FEAR.
And fear of difference is what breeds racism, and intolerance, and panic, and
violence. Our enemy is not each other, it is our own fear, and we need to
realize that. So, we need to conquer that fear because difference should not
divide us, it shouldn’t make us afraid. It should be something we accept,
something that pushes us to think about other points of view, other opinions,
learn about other cultures and belief systems, and embrace those who live
different life experiences than our own. Yes, we have these small, tiny
differences, but these differences should not be battles we wage everything on,
because at the end of the day we are all human beings each with a body, a mind,
a beating heart, and a soul, and that is what we must remember.
Written on April 29th, 2019 By: Confessions of a Chaotic
Mind
Confessions of a Chaotic Mind 