Taking a break from revision to blog… you might call it blog-therapy
I eternally ponder upon differing beliefs, values and attitudes towards issues of life, which contribute to people’s life aspirations, decisions and general notions of personhood.
I have, for a long time, lived convinced that we are all the product of the experiences that we have had in life and the belief systems that have kept us.
And what is right and wrong anyway? We do have the basic shared beliefs, such as that it’s wrong to kill, or at least kill random innocent people on the street, or to steal from babies.
But even those are thrown into question according to one’s life experiences, ones perceived needs, and what one was taught to believe.
Youngsters involved in gang initiations will not hesitate to waste the life of an innocent person…a person in the wrong place at the wrong time…or perhaps in the right place, but at the wrong time.
All to prove some worthiness of joining a particularly group….of course this need to prove is testament of a deeper seated need to feel acceptance and belonging, attributable to a void- an apparent lack of acceptance and belonging being felt in the young’uns life.
As a Christian I have quite clear ideas on basic moral principles; of the concept of what right and wrong entails- I was brought up with a moral framework which I was largely expected to stick by, although inevitably would test and question. And to be honest I believe that this realisation caused my parents to rarely leave out the ‘why’ element of the conditions of the household. And for this I have become more and more grateful every day.
It meant that though I need not have agreed with absolutely everything I was told to do growing up, I could at least understand why I was being told to do it….and respect it too because my parents, in particularly my mother, adopted a do as I do approach to parenting. My mother almost never asked me to live by a principle that she herself did not lie by for me clearly to see. It was an attitude that I saw her adopt in positions of authority that she has found herself in over the years, and has shaped my attitude towards leadership, specifically servant-leadership.
My point is, that as I continue to grow, I feel more and more of a need to have compassion or at least understanding for differing points of view and for people, who, in in sticky life situations, or with frowned upon attitudes/ behaviours according to society. Because often these people react to what they have experienced and been conditioned with, often right from the formative years of childhood and adolescence. And it’s not all who come through the ups and downs of life without deep-seated bitterness, or evident emotional scars.
That is not to say that I don’t believe people should be held accountable for their actions, or to excuse bad behaviour (at the more extreme end of differences of opinion). Because at the end of the day what eventually makes us who we are, is how we respond to our experiences and accountability has to be a feature once you pass a certain age and state of immaturity. Not least because of the impact that the actions of one person can so often have on other people.
No, my thoughts are expressed more in keeping with my increasing understanding and appreciation of God’s grace. But also in continued promotion of the belief that no one has a right to judge due to some innate sense of just being that good, or in truth, misplaced self-righteousness. And in conclusion, that in order to fix the evidence of the issues on the surface, the peak of the problems if you will, you need to tackle the larger iceberg much more deeply placed below the surface.
And now, I shall go back to reading an article on the impact of internal and transnational migration on family life….such an Anthropologist.
The Narrator's Pen 