Saving our own worlds

“We can’t save the world, Monique,” my mother said to me in an early month of 2007, as I sat in my recently deceased grandmother’s armchair, crying at the television.

 

As many mothers do, she rubbed my back, and consoled me on bended knee, as I wrapped myself in a luxurious felt dressing gown she had bought me for my previous birthday. I felt her pain, feeling my almost irrational pain.

 

My grandfather, in his final months of terminal dementia, sat across from me staring blankly at the news bulletin. His head rested in his left palm as he rejected the world’s affairs and quietly lamented the loss of his beloved wife of sixty-four years. At eighty-three years of age, who really gives a shit if the world around you is imploding or exploding? Two months ago, his world already ceased to exist. The moment the woman who he held in the highest regard died, the moment his fairy tale came to screeching halt, was the moment he check out of any major world issues, or local for that matter. Who can blame him?

 

My grandfather, whom passed away twelve months later, was a rare breed of a man. He held my grandmother on a pedestal and recognised her to be a woman of strength, character, stoicism, and grace. She managed their life, family, household, and general affairs with class and resolve, and made decisions that impacted countless numbers of family members beyond their time for the better. She wasn’t just a great woman. He was a great man, because he owned the depth and comfort of his own masculinity that stepping aside to allow the more capable person in the relationship to make calls on behalf of the family was not a concern for him. He knew her power, and his ego did not interfere with the greater good of our family.

 

At the time, I was in a state of turmoil. Not only had I lost my grandmother, whom was a friend, confidant, and idol to me, I had split from my boyfriend, moved back in with my mother and grandfather, and was commuting five hours a day return to pursue an arts career. I was grief-stricken, exhausted, broke, and lost.


Still, I thought it was my obligation to look outward.

 

Watching atrocities committed in my own backyard and across the globe was more than I could bare. I wanted to contribute to a positive shift in this wayward world of ours, but I was paralysed by the enormity of it all.

 

I resented what I translated to be my mother’s flippant dismissal of world events: animal cruelty, genocide, corruption, rapes, murder, human rights violations at every turn… and I was determined to prove her wrong as a defeated white, middle class person who just got on the treadmill of life and forewent greater good for personal preservation.

 

Seven years on, I now understand that my mother did not become shut off from the world, or ignorant to the issues of the human race, rather, she developed a filter that allowed her to block out what was beyond her reach, freeing her to nourish, protect and nurture her world. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She just had the wisdom to know that her best practice was caring for her children and her parents.

 

It starts at home.

 

I have ridden a rollercoaster of guilt and grief for every person and creature on the planet that has endured a less fortunate hand than I have been given. I was certain I would do something that would change it.

 

At thirty-two years of age, I now find myself shutting out world news, so I can connect with who I am, and make sure that person is someone I would want to be around. It has been a challenging, arduous journey.

 

What I now know to be true is that, of course, my mother was right. I cannot save the world. If I weigh myself down with every issue that faces us as a race, I will fall in a heap and cry with despair and helplessness like I did so many years ago.

 

If I make sure I am progressing toward an open, honest, altruistic and flourishing existence, I will be better equipped to extend my understanding of the world to those around me, and hopefully, have a positive impact on my own, small world.

 

There are 234 girls in Nigeria who desperately need help. I will do everything I can to contribute to a movement that will take them back to their families and send a message that in the year 2014, whether you’re in Australia, Africa, Asia, America, or Antarctica, we’re all equal. We’re made of the same stuff, and we will suffer as long as our neighbours suffer.

 

The current model is failing. We’re on the brink of environmental suicide, children are dying from starvation, the vulnerable are ignored or exploited, and women are supressed.

Meanwhile, this week, our headlines were dominated by two cashed-up bogans in fisty-cuffs, and our Treasurer having the audacity to be a human and smoke a cigar. Four blokes. Running the country. Winning.

 

The patriarchy is failing.

 

It’s time to embrace change before we end up in damage control as a race. Growing older, and more comfortable in my own skin, I am more aware now of my capabilities and the realities of what is being fed to us through media.

 

I know this is heavy for a Sunday night. It is Mother’s Day, after all, but I can’t think of a better way than to pay homage to my mother and grandmother than acknowledging their strength and significance as people. Women who have struggled without complaint through generations of oppression and change. Women who know through instinct and emotion and experience that we should be in charge, if not completely, at least fifty percent, of this world, because if we were, incidents like Nigeria would not happen.  The rate of sexual assault (currently 1/3 of every woman on the planet will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime – WHAT?!) would not be what it is. There would not be the domestic violence rate there is. The poverty rate for women would not be what it is. I’m just going to say it: the world would not be as broken as it is.

 

I’m not a man-hater. In fact, quite the opposite. I think it is a tough time to be a man. But beating and raping and extorting and controlling women through action or non-action or worse – silence and condoning  - things as they are, you are contributing to the demise of our people.

 

You have had your turn, men. Now, be like my radical, forward thinking, brilliant grandfather, and accept when it’s in the best interest of the greater good to step aside.

 

And the only way we can really achieve change, is by looking in the backyard. Criticise those who are taking action all you want.

 

What are you doing about it?

 

 

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