An opportunity to be better

On celebrating the pain of others...

I have noticed that online it’s easy to see two camps form when a woman politician has a public “fall from grace”. There are those who delight in it, revel in it…they’re overjoyed by it. The need to shame women, to put them in their place, it’s a drug and they can’t get enough of it.

Then there are those who try to find grace. What could be behind someone’s struggle? What could be the cause of someone’s public pain? When someone acts completely out of character, is this an opportunity for kindness? For patience? For mercy?

In these two camps, which do you think you’d rather live in long term? What does it do to your sense of humanity when the only way you can feel joy is to wallow in the social shaming of others? If you celebrate someone’s destruction, you’re ultimately celebrating your own.

Because I genuinely don’t think it’s sustainable to be constantly waiting for someone else’s loss of dignity to cover for yours. I don’t think your heart heals if someone else’s has to break in order for you to be distracted from what you’re feeling.

In a country with an absolutely astonishing suicide rate, we have recently seen three brown women politicians struggle publicly with their mental health.

All three are publicly facing vitriol for private nightmares. We have an opportunity to choose how we react to their pain, so awfully on display.

We can make our home in one of those two camps.

We can choose forgiveness, mercy, and grace. We can choose to give privacy, care, and support. We can choose to see that our loved ones might be privately battling what we are commenting on publicly - and how safe they feel around us is being decided with each hot take we give.

We can look at the bigger pricture. We can refuse to shy away from the hard questions. We can refuse to gobble up the discourse without thinking. We can choose a genuine desire to understand over a desire to feed the beast that wants us to relentless dunk on anyone who puts their head up above the parapet. We can choose nuance. We can choose humanness. We can try to show the best parts of ourselves to the children watching who might one day think - “Do I have it in me to try to change this world? To serve my country?”

Or we can choose to get into the neverending muck. To just dive into the awfully sad wreckage of someone else’s pain and swim in it.

I know where I want to set up camp. I know we’re not alone in wanting better. And I know there are many of us who can see the view is clearer with compassion, with care.

And what a view it is, if we just take the opportunity to be better to each other.