Idag blir det ett inlägg på engelska (en svensk översättning under bilden). Det är baserat på en FB-postning jag gjorde i morse när jag översköljdes av en våg på sociala medier av förtvivlad chock och fasa över vad som komma månde utifrån resultatet i det amerikanska presidentvalet.
I agree that something uncertain and very threatening is being born as today dawns. Then, now (again) is the time to start building that ”beloved community” that Dr King spoke about. It is time to ”be that change that you want to see in the world,” as Mahatma Ghandi wrote about. It is time to acknowledge, with Nelson Mandela, that it is ”our human compassion [that] binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.”
It is time to add the next stone in the construction of the future I desire and seek. By acting it in words and deeds. By treating others as I wish to be treated. By refraining from using words to dehumanize people, even if I’m condemning their actions.
It is time to see the guilt and shame beyond facades of hate, anger, arrogance. And to meet that fear and anger with love, compassion, hope.
I choose not to see Trump and those who voted for him as monsters, zombies, imbecilles, deplorables or whatever label I’m offered to put on them. Labelling them would deprive them of their humanity, all their responsabilities for actions hitherto and to come, as well as all hope for them and their communities to choose new paths. And it would strenghten an alienation and a divide that is already part of the fear and shame that drives the populistic movement. No need to fuel that.
Now is the time to stop talking about new narratives, and start living the narrative we want to realize in our world. And that narrative is turned into reality, not by campaigns, not mainly by politics or structures, but first and foremost by how we relate to each other, person to person.
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