It’s been a wonderful and strange week in this
world, hasn’t it? The US government’s
still shut down. In the UK, legislation
was passed to make landlords, banks and GPs participate in the xenophobic witch
hunt called immigration control. And the
Spirit Moose in Canada was legally killed by non-indigenous hunters.
Then Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize. We chuckled over David Gilmour showing his
narrow minded ass. The White Hats win and
they’re worn by women. Canadian
women. If Munro had been gay and
Chinese, I would’ve gone back to church.
Having said that, it’s here where we move a little too close to the
self-destruct edge.
Let me tell you about a cat. Stray Eddie.
A pot bellied, one eyed, scrofulous, geriatric stray with hair like an
American opossum. In other words,
icky. We very kindly brought him into
our home where he promptly savaged the Butler, terrorised the much smaller
females, urinated in all the wrong places, jumped up on the table during meals
with the expectation he could eat from our plates.
What an ingrate.
He had to go. The Butler rang
round and was told by cat rescues that the only solution was euthanasia. Okay, our home had been taken over by the
North Yorkshire Monster, but euthanasia?
You do know what that means. Kill
the monster. Kill. The. Monster.
Kill.
We weren’t going to do that. Fortunately, our vet explained cat behaviour
to us and we realised we’d been making Stray Eddie more and more stressed
out. Here we had an elderly cat with a
collar mark still in his fur who apparently had never been let outside and
seems to’ve lived alone with one person who treated him like a human companion. Now he’s been turfed out only to find shelter where he's under siege by other cats and the new
humans have no manners. On the plus
side, he seemed to like the Big Nosed Dog.
So we’ve implemented the vet’s attitude adjustment
plan (to the humans) and immediately, things’ve calmed down. The cats aren’t merrily skipping round a May
Pole, but the reign of terror is over.
Stray Eddie and our calico are in the kitchen together watching birds as
I write. I’m certain they still hate
each other, but you can’t have everything.
The same tactics apply to the human world. In his interview, Jon
Stewart asked Malala how she reacted to
learning that she’d become a Taliban target.
She said her first thought was that she’d take a shoe and defend
herself. Then she thought, if she used
violence, she’d be no different than her attackers. She decided that she would tell them how
important education was – for their children, too – and then say, ‘Now do what
you want.’
I doubt she had time for dialogue before she was
shot. However, even after the attempt on
her life, she believes that we can only bring change through dialogue and
peace. How wow is that?
We have the power to be wow, too. Or to be Monsters to someone else. Writers tweet, blog, express more succinctly and
thus more convincingly than most.
Therein lies the strength and the danger. We can be the GOP holding an entire nation
hostage – not just Democrats but children, cancer patients, veterans, the
elderly – or we can be Malalas who put down our weapons and recognise the
humanity in each other.
Today is National Coming Out Day. Today there will be children as young as
Malala and adults as old as myself who take that step, who hope they will be met
with dialogue rather than weapons. Some lives
won’t survive today. But the reason the
possibility exists for a Coming Out Day is because of the belief that dialogue
and communication can win out over weapons and hatred. When they do, it takes our breath away.
My hand is up to say I’m guilty of all sorts of –isms. I know they’re more naughty fun than being
Malala. But you and I are the
communicators. We have a huge
responsibility to do no harm. After you’ve
been shot, after someone kills your Spirit Moose, after the opposition passes a
bill you dislike, don’t pick up a gun, don’t shut down the government, don’t
kill the monster. Don’t deride, don’t
ridicule, don’t alienate.
Create. Communicate.
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