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Every week Esther Chilton gives us a challenge to use a list of words and write a set number of words..
This week’s is 55 words including :
Morning on the reef. A yellow crab skittered through the labyrinth of coral. It was headed to its feeding ground on the other side of the bay. But the cruel sea washed over and soaked everything in a deluge. Waves like great wheels curved up and back. In a moment the crab was washed away.
Is Lady Liberty disappearing into mist and fog? What happened to the support of huddled masses? Can there possibly be mass deportations?
Looking up the name of the island where people arrived in America, Google says:
On 1 January 1892, Ellis Island opened to receive immigrants. At its peak, during the early years of the 20th Century, thousands of people passed through its gates each day. Angel Island in San Francisco Bay had the same role on the west coast from 1910 to 1940.
So why is this aspect of America. Support and kindness now being curtailed? Perhaps it is through fear, perhaps it is selfishness. I don’t know. There seems to be almost a mass hysteria around the world where xenophobia is taking control. We see it in the UK where the legal routes to migration have been reduced and people fleeing conflict have been forced to risk travelling across the Channel in small boats to get to the UK. Vicious rumours about those poor people have caused riots and misinformed so many people in negative ways.
We see war in Syria now that has started to maim and kill people again. Destabilising countries causes strife and fear and forces people to move. Gaza is in crisis, Ukraine is being destroyed. Sudan has floods and starvation to mention a few current crises. But instead of dealing with the bad actors we allow the oligarchs of the world to feel they can get away with their cruelty.
All of us need to stop and think about kindness, caring and love. It’s about time we thought as President Kennedy did, not what we can do for ourselves but what we can do for others. Somewhere humanity needs to think about our fellow humans and not just grabbing what we can and damn the rest.
It makes me dispair and worry about what we are doing. Maybe fear of what’s happening to the Earth’s environment is now impacting on its population. Somehow we must start to care more about each other.
Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.
It says it all “# be kind”.
Why not? Why be horrible, unkind, cruel? To make life better for yourself by harming others? Too many dictators and politicians seem to think this way. Often they say populist things to the public, while making decisions that often go against their rhetoric. Looking to increase their power. Then again a lot CEOs pay themselves massive amounts above the lowest paid workers. 80 men earn more put together than half the world’s population, that’s about 4,000,000,000 (4 billion) people!
Kindness can be financial, or verbal, it might just be a gentle hug. It might be not enforcing unfair rules and laws that would be detrimental to different races, faiths, or sexualities. Often conflict is about us and them. Being unkind or treating people as ‘other’ or not ‘one of us’ is not what I support.
Basically it simply comes down to thinking about people, thinking what they need, and trying to help if you can, even if it’s only a few kind words. Be considerate, be kind.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I used to be hurt when people said things to me to upset me. I would take on board what they said, and it could lead to several sleepless nights, or mistrusting my judgement or feelings.
After a few years of this I talked to a new friend who explained a way of getting through or over the uncaring words.
What they said was imagine the nasty words are poison. The words are absorbed by the victim (in this case me) and the poison works it’s way into the mind of the person they want to hurt. This affects that person’s confidence, thoughts, security.
But in the meantime the person doing the poisoning walks away scot free. With no effect on them, able to go and place poison elsewhere, spreading their cruelty and getting a rise out of others.
The trick is to realise what they are doing and train yourself to ignore their jibes. Inoculate your mind against their poison and learn to stop their tricks before they can get to you. It really does help.
Mallaband-Brown