-on Friday 17th June 2016
‘Jeez, she was JUST an MP! People die EVERY DAY!’ said
the 12y.o. white British boy I look after. It was sunny morning with a bit of
cold undertone which makes you shiver after some time and as usual BBC Radio
was on with their daily dose of news which my host mum for reasons unknown to
me likes to consume together with her bowl of apple porridge. Good morning,
aren’t you lucky to wake up alive?
Now this statement of his made me ambivalently upset
and pleased at the same time. I chose not to reply to him with anything long or
complicated because I wanted him to keep his opinion but I kept on thinking
about this topic for most time of the rest of that day. How could I possibly do
otherwise anyway?
Let’s start with pleased, shall we? From what I
already know about him, his knowledge and feelings but also half from guessing
what he meant by these short and sharp sentences is kind of obvious but I can
say I’m sure he meant it in a broader and deeper sense. I’m sure he had in mind
all those men, women and children refugees fleeing both from Africa and Middle
East who weren’t able to make their way to a safer place, all those men and
women who stayed in their countries fighting, all those children in Africa
dying from combination of hard child labour and hunger, all those being
silently murdered by regime in Russia, China or North Korea, all those women
around the world dying as a result from rape and so much more. I always mention
global issues in our conversations and then just tell him to look up more if he
wants to or he doesn’t believe me. So I was really pleased when I heard this as
a proof he’s aware of and acknowledging these problems and hopefully even his
white privilege. It’s not that bad for a 12 year old, right?
So of course in comparison with all these alarmingly
high numbers of deaths happening simultaneously all around the world, this in a
way is ‘just one’ of these numbers but there’s something really disgusting about
reducing every person into just number of statistics (I’ll get to that later
on) or into just few generalizing labels, don’t you think? Probably
because then it’s way easier to forget they were living and feeling human
beings exactly as we are. And that will always be really efficient for certain
someone. We should start thinking and talking about it in a way numbers will become people again.
Now we’re getting to what made me upset which was exactly
this way he degraded her whole life to one label and the problem here is she
was firstly obviously way more than just an MP which she had have been for
around 13 months. A bit more than one year should not define the whole person
and neither should their race, gender, sexuality, religion etc. You get the
point. She was also a person like him or me or hopefully you - person reading
this – in comparison with others very privileged white people but at least
we’re aware of global problems.
And she was not only aware of them but she was
also trying her best to do at least something about them. She was trying to do
her bit of making the world better place every single day. It’s very easy to
look up all the things she did and I highly suggest you do it for yourself if
you do not know it already. She deserves few more minutes of your reading,
learning and a bit more thinking about the legacy she left for the rest of us.
I admit since I’m not that much interested in politics and she was serving MP
not even close to my living area I didn’t know anything about her right up
until I started noticing the afternoon news pouring in on Twitter. Learning she
was such enormously loving and helping woman from her death backwards was and
still is shockingly devastating and I honestly hope it will not stop outraging
us. It’s a great shame and loss when lives of committed people with such a good
heart are so drastically cut short.
But, as I believe, so there are way too many good
people with potential lost among all the others who then are just reduced into a number for
statistical argument or a headline.
Where do we go from here in comparison with
other events? Why dismiss talking about her or deaths of 49 LGBTQ people? And
what about the classical ‘Things are not serious until white people get killed?’
It’s really obvious you can gather that feeling from the way mass media write
about world event or from most of the politicians but that doesn’t necessarily
mean this way of caring about world around you just in your personal interest
has to be applied in your life as well. It doesn’t have to be this way and personally
I think people shouldn’t live in such a bubble. We just need to listen, think
and learn more broadly. Why argue about whose lives matter more? We all feel as
equally devastated when we lose someone we love. Why shame others for feeling
grief out of empathy or compassion when you cannot even know whether that person
wasn’t just reminded of someone who they knew or lost? Why shame others for
being capable of such basic but very important human emotion as grief or
sadness?
I think instead of dismissing it you should use it in a
gentle way to remind these people what else is happening around them and make
them see everyone is or was somebody else’s significant other; through their own
pain make them feel compassion for everyone else as well. Make them remember
we’re all the same living beings.
Start with talking about how and who was she helping to. Use this
horrible unfortunate example in respect to her life and to open up a conversation and other people’s
ears, minds and hearts at least to encourage them to listen more and to see
what’s happening beyond their garden’s fence so we can slowly stop this disgusting
epidemic of selective hearing in which everybody infected doesn’t want to
acknowledge life situations and feelings of people from countries that are
further than just his or her own homeland.
...
I dedicate this piece to Jo Cox, incredibly amazing woman
who I shall now carefully place among my other female role models and to whom
I’ll stay grateful simply for who she was and what she stood for. I can’t even
begin to express how sorry I am you gave me the reason to write this but at the
same time you gave me courage to eventually say some of what’s on my mind out
loud.
Thank you greatly for confirming my beliefs in better world and goodness
in people despite the way you left.
I’ll never forget you, Jo.
