It isn’t very often that I sit down in front of the computer with nothing to say. Usually, the opposite problem plagues me: too many interesting topics, too many directions to spin off into, too much to say.
The challenge I usually face is one of paring down, choosing a path, and sticking to it. An abundance of opinions, each one needing research and citation, each one requiring the opposing opinion to be presented and then destroyed. When it’s your job to have an opinion, you don’t usually find yourself lacking them.
I don’t know what the problem is. Do I feel less strongly about the issues affecting the world? No—many of them still preoccupy me. Climate change, justice issues, what happens after we die—these thoughts and many others will still keep me up at night, if I let them.
Is it that all outcomes feel inevitable, so what’s the purpose of putting my thoughts onto paper? That isn’t true either, because I know the impact of words in both directions—what other people’s words mean to me, and what my words can mean to others.
Could it be that I feel anything worth saying has already been said, possibly better than I could ever say it? While that might be so, it doesn’t mean those things don’t bear repeating. I know for myself that I often need to hear information at least three times before it seems to take up permanent residency in my mind. So it’s not that I feel I need to say something new and original every time I write—because this just might be the time that someone reads it and really gets it (whatever ‘it’ is; I’m always surprised by what people take away from writings).
So what’s going on here? I want to talk to you, whoever is reading this. Not at you. I want to be responded to as if I were sitting across the coffee table from you, not like I’m an invisible opinion machine without feelings to be eviscerated in the comment section. I want to hear your actual concerns behind your reactions. I want to know what’s important to you, and what just isn’t.
I don’t want to feel like we aren’t in this together. This is my community, my home—this is where I wake up and choose to be, every day. Any changes I want to make through my activism have very real, very near people benefiting from them. Any comments that are written in response to me, I read, and carefully. So why do we feel so very far apart?
Ah. I think I’ve come to the crux of it. I know I’m far from the only one feeling this way—the world has been like a minefield lately; like no matter where I place my foot, I’m blowing up the very ground I’m trying to walk on. When I meet you in the middle, we both get blasted. When I try to direct, your blood is on my hands. When I follow you, I’ll resent you if I blow up. There’s no pathway here, and very few trustworthy trailblazers.
I’m tired. I’m tired of being deliberately misunderstood, of being strawmanned, of the shifting goalposts in any debate, in the bad, bad, bad, bad faith arguments. I don’t want to live this way. I want us to be able to find common ground, not put barbed wire around it and call it ‘no man’s land’. I want to feel like people are actually looking for solutions instead of looking for salacious headlines, out-of-context quotations, and the brief false-joy of feeling right. I want us to feel better, not righter.
I’ve been wrong a lot in my life. Some of that comes from assuming I know what’s right before I know what’s going on, some of it comes from repeating things I’ve been taught and never challenged, and some of it is because the world is a growing and changing place, where you can be right one day and almost unbelievably wrong the next, simply because we gained new insight. I don’t mind being wrong because it means I’m learning.
I also find that if avoiding being wrong is high on your list, so should be avoiding public speaking. It is easy to be quiet and right, but it doesn’t change the world. Everyone with even a modicum of power needs to get really comfortable with admitting they are wrong when it’s demonstrably true, or else we end up looking stubborn and foolish—and adhering to bad information can cost lives.
I don’t know who I’m speaking to. Is it the people who agree with me, or the ones who don’t? Is it the loud ones, or the quiet ones? Is it those who are right, or those who aren’t?
I fear that we’ve lost the discernment of what needs our attention. Do you fight cancer or do you treat it? We are being asked, as a society, to go against our natural inclination to connection and stay apart to stay safe. We’re being asked this by government, which has very little social trust regardless of who holds office. We have so much proof of wrongdoing by those in power that we are suspicious and skeptical of even the most basic life-saving interventions.
And what I’ve observed, and what is undoubtedly behind my vacillation on writing this, on writing anything, is that the longer we stay apart, the more alien we find each other. We are losing our ability to empathize with people who have different opinions than us because we no longer see each other as community members, merely people who occupy physical proximity but have no face-to-face contact.
The computer screen is the biggest liar I’ve ever met—it tells the story that the internet isn’t real life, that anyone who disagrees is a troll, it makes us categorize people based on the tiny text box they’ve provided. And it absolutely makes us feel like the person we are talking to is just a combo of ones and zeros, not a real person from whom we can learn or whom is worth teaching.
I’m afraid we’ve decided we are done learning—we’ve decided we know it all, and now our job is to hop on the computer and spew what we ‘know’. We can’t be wrong when our friends and followers are watching. We can’t change our minds because we’ll feel stupid. We can’t see each other as people because then we’d know the landmines matter.
And who benefits?
Corporations. Alienated people shop more, impoverished people can’t afford locally made items, lateral violence means we are battling each other and not those who are trying to control us. And governments who are two sides of the same coin by design, both glutted and gutted by capitalism, less interested in representation than compensation.
So where are we?
In this together, still.
And does it even matter?
Really, it’s the only thing that does.
Watch your step.
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Kathleen May (Photo: Kai Rannik)
Kathleen May is a writer, speaker, and activist. Her column, She Speaks, has appeared in the Huntsville Doppler since 2018. Her work in our community includes co-founding the long-running Huntsville Women’s Group, volunteering with Muskoka Parry Sound Sexual Assault Services, and her role as a front-line counsellor at the women’s shelter. Kathleen is a 2018 Woman of Distinction for Social Activism and Community Development. She was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize, short-listed for the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize, and received the Best Author award for her 2018 submission at the Muskoka Novel Marathon, a fundraiser for literacy services. When she isn’t writing, she’s designing a tiny house which she intends to be the impetus for a sustainable women’s land co-operative in Muskoka.
This line: the longer we stay apart, the more alien we find each other
I fear.
I don’t make eye contact when wearing a mask. I don’t notice the grocery store worker like I used to because I am wearing a mask and therefore invisible. I am not against masks, just aware of their social cost.
And to another point that you made, the more visible us vocalizers become, the more vitriol is possible. Ah the juxtaposition of invisible and yet so visible. What are we really seeing?
Thank you Kathleen.
I’ve been working beside a District road, not even a major highway, this spring. I’m just off the highway enough to be sort of invisible, doing some forestry work, but I can see and observe the passing vehicles with no problems.
About three weeks ago, as the snow melted, some kind person went along and collected all the beer cans they could easily reach. This is a help of sorts, but they left everything else in the way of trash. This sort of bugs me as I go along and collect everything, to try to make the area look nice for summer and although it is a meaningless sort of thing in the overall scheme of things it is nice to get a few dollars for beer empties. Anyway the shiny new car that collected them got them as usual. It would just be nice if they did a complete job instead of just creaming the beer. So much for my rant.
The point I’m gradually getting to is that this was about three weeks ago. (remember this time period)
So a few days ago my Sister got the urge to clean the road again, too a part day to do the same area and collected some Horton’s cups etc. AND 38 new beer empties. Now this is for about a half km. of a fairly minor District road so we can assume that these empties have been tossed (after drinking) from vehicles in that three week period along a half km. of road. I find it had to conceive of any other way beer cans can arrive in a ditch.
This is a bit depressing. My Sister’s comment was “we don’t deserve to have a planet”!
The other thing I noted was driving habits. Where I was working was on a bit of a hill, nothing big, just a slope and there was an intersection down near the bottom. Now one of the things you note is that a stop sign is viewed as a sort of rough guidance suggestion by most drivers. It’s actual meaning and requirement to come to a stop, well that obviously does not really apply does it, at least not to a lot of drivers!
The second thing is that having turned onto the road, they accelerate up this grade on their way home or to town or whatever it may be. Now if you watch the ads for pick up trucks you will know that you can indeed get a Dodge pick up with 702 HP under the hood. Why is the question not answered, but it must apply to some contractors and service workers need to get home in the minimum amount of time because it sure sounds like they are using every available horsepower to accelerate up this grade when they head home. If one wanted to save fuel, and money, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one would accelerate gently, like all the driving schools will tell you. Easier on your pocket book and your vehicle and it adds a few seconds to your trip time if even that.
Don’t get to thinking I’m selecting contractors, it is just that they make up the majority of the vehicles at the location I was at. There was today some dude in a bright red Corvette convertible and he seemed to be trying to break all records as he headed up this grade. He was leaving rubber, using all the power and gears he could find and by the top of the hill, for what it might be worth, he had to be doing double the speed limit. Way to go dude! you just used up more resources than an Somali family uses in a week so you could get up that hill in less than 5 seconds and illegally at that. If some kid had been riding their bike just over the top of the hill it might have been less a display of power and speed and the cops would still be there trying to sort out what happened.
Maybe my Sister is right? Do we deserve to have a planet? Our actions don’t seem to match up to a significant respect for what we have so I have to ask.
Hello, Kathleen – I have been reading your “She Speaks” column for quite some time now and have found your words to be moving and educational. I have profound respect for your thoughtfulness. This most recent column is a wonderful case-in-point, and I applaud your call/need/desire to find our common humanity and to acknowledge and even celebrate our differences respectfully and with open hearts and minds. We have so much to gain from such an approach. Thank you for being so articulate and full of heart. Keep writing!! Your words do, indeed, make a difference!!!!
Kathleen, I’ve read your thought provoking commentary three times and will surely read it again. There are so many complex ideas, questions, values and deep concerns that you’ve expressed.
Our community and our world are facing so many serious issues: corporate irresponsibility, the influence on society, good and bad, of the internet and social media, climate change and other existential issues of this planet that sustains all life (including us); a pandemic crisis that is affecting our connectedness and empathy, to mention just a few that you’ve referred to. And, of course, most of us are very tired.
Many paragraphs could be expanded into a full commentary and more. I find myself agreeing with the premise of each paragraph, and each is worthy of more discussion and sharing of ideas back and forth.
You are definitely not the only one feeling this way. As a (retired) teacher of secondary school world issues, critical and creative thinking, media literacy and environmental studies for more than three decades, and a writer of secondary school textbooks, news articles and so on, I understand your need to research and cite your writings before expressing ideas and opinions.
One of the frustrating things about reading commentary on sites like Doppler is reading many ( certainly not all!) uninformed opinions and strongly biased “spin”, often with the omission of some true, salient aspects of another viewpoint.
I was shocked recently to discover that a friend has become bamboozled and sucked in by the internet conspiracy theories that negate the existence of or at least seriousness of the Covid crisis in Ontario and around the globe. “Oh it’s not as bad as the flu.” That was an uncomfortable conversation.
I have yet to understand what motivates the trolls and those who spread conspiracy nonsense. What do they really gain other than disrupting society? Why would this be a goal? Yes, another issue altogether, but you have certainly provoked my thoughts.
From across the (cyberspace) coffee table, thank-you for this Kathleen. It’s a brilliant piece of writing that has left me feeling informed, inspired, validated and frustrated in some ways.