Selectively Juggling

What makes me nervous? Quite truthfully, a good many things. However, the most alarming issue at present would be people falling to learn from the atrocities of the past. It’s both saddening and maddening knowing that scores of people have chosen to rewrite history, reframe past narratives, and in doing so ignore the lessons of the past. Have we not learned? Have we not witnessed, felt and experienced the heartache? The violence? I’m nervous about the seismic shift back towards a 1930’s style rhetoric and regime, that segregates, violates and pontificates violence. I was recently stopped in my tracks by the saying “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,”

Well let’s just say that rhyme is a lot less sentimental or poignant prose, and a whole lot of clanging, deafening discordant sounds. There’s a focus on the pendulum swinging between violent roar and threatening war. I’m nervous about the future of humanity. I’m nervous about people losing sight of shared experiences and humanity, and maniacally focusing on and demonising difference. I’m nervous for my children’s future – I’m nervous for all of humanity. I’m nervous that tyrants are held high, creating a whole new cult of personality phenomena. We saw what happened last time, and current events now more than rhyme, they’re sharing an eerie resemblance. Humanity has fought too hard and for too long to walk back now.

I’m nervous about living in a world of hatred, of sameness, and of black and white. I want to exist in a world of incredible colour, texture, depth and vibrancy. I want to be able to look around and not see a scene straight out of the ‘Handmaid’s tale’, I want a world where we acknowledge the violence of the past, the colonial past and violence. I want a world where humanity is more than skin deep, and not categorised and valued according to ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, age, ability, neurodiversity and intelligence etc. Aren’t we all a manifestation of human experience?