He read out Rod Liddle’s article last night while I made supper. His is usually rather caustic, leaning towards the right, journalism but this time it was more thoughtful, even rather derisive towards himself. He wrote about an incident from his past when he was working in London, and how, like crowds of others, he’d stepped over a man who’d collapsed so as to get on the tube in time for work. He had cause to remember it when he heard about the Norwegian mountaineerer who has been accused of leaving one of her sherpas to die alone on the mountain side. We all have such stains on our consciences. I am certain of it. I have them, though I can’t remember the specifics in the way that Liddle can. All those things we have done or not done that scar our sense of self. The unkind, the selfish acts that make us in-humane rather than human. I’ve been unbrave. I’ve avoided reaching out to comfort a stranger. I know I have. Was it fear of intimacy, of boundaries broken? Who knows. We are all guilty of it. Look at the way we behave as a nation over the refugees who come here across dangerous waters for safety. We turn away, we castigate and label them and then put them on insanitary barges or worse ship them off to Rwanda. We do not see human beings. I am ashamed of myself, of all of us. Let us do better. Let us know better. Let us be kind.
