I’ve been thinking a lot about this the last few days. About decency, humanity, compassion. Wondering why it is that some people feel it acceptable to use others as vehicles for their own disaffections, their own cynicism, their own lack of ability to feel connected to humanity. Or even worse, why some people feel it acceptable to trample on the lives of others in their desperate scrabble to exorcise their own pain, or rationalise their own feelings or actions, or score a cheap victory in their struggle for self-aggrandisement?
Of course I know that it has been “ever thus”. I know that there have always been people who are happy to cause pain for gain. And there have always been people who have lost sight of the fact that they cause pain for gain. But so often now I look around me and see it – a lack of simple common decency. Maybe (probably) I am just getting old. I notice these things more. Or they tire me more. Or both. But I was reminded of it again tonight reading a piece of (purported) journalism in the newspaper I grew up reading. A newspaper for most of my younger years I believed represented honourably the left in Britain. A newspaper I gave up reading a long time ago because of a plethora of exactly the kind of piece that so rattled me today. A mean-spirited little piece abut the UK Prime Minister struggling briefly with his emotions when during the course of an interview he was asked about the death of his baby daughter nearly 10 years ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/09/gordon-brown-daughter-death
The piece is so jaded, and cynical, so lacking in any sense of simple common decency I was left slack-jawed. My heart ached at the thought of Mr Brown or his family reading those casually cruel arrows pointed straight at the deepest, darkest heart of their suffering and pain – the loss of a child. I posted a comment, because if nothing else, I do think we should all speak up in the face of the forces of banal casual cruelty. And I was hugely heartened that though we are a minority, I was not the only one to feel compelled to challenge this particular journalist on her lack of humanity. Still, it left a sour taste in my mouth.
But then I thought of here… of the people who gather here to share a love of music, and of the music itself. And I felt heartened. Re-assured. There’s been quite a white shirt twitter-fest of late about Dido and Aenas. What could be a more perfect way to counter this young woman’s sad loss of compassion than with a burst of music from a soul that connected so perfectly with human pain and suffering, performed by a voice of such enormous dignity and beauty it brings its important sentiments to an almost unbearable pitch? And between them Purcell and von Otter remind us of all that Ms Tanya Gold has forgotten (or perhaps lost); that there is nothing more human than to acknowledge simply and with an open heart another’s grief and tragedy. That in the depths of such misery and emotion we are reminded of our essential connection to all other human beings. We all must face loss. We all must grieve. We forget that at our peril. Thank god for Purcell and von Otter!
And thank your margotlorena for sharing this with us.
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