Differences

The year leading up to the 2024 election was tense and stressful. Then after that appalling day, we were left sick with apprehension. In the months since the inauguration, I’ve asked myself whether my dread was justified. Or should I have been even more afraid?

Being afraid is not helpful and worrying can make you ill. The best thing, I decided, was to keep informed and protest in whatever small ways are possible.

And take mental health breaks which, living where I do, is blessedly possible.

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It is also important to maintain perspective and to be grateful.

At an early age, I learned how unequal were the fortunes of human beings when I saw children younger than myself carrying small siblings on a hip. Their parents were out in the fields or off working elsewhere. No fancy day-care or baby-sitters.

Young children in villages looked after each other.

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Entertainment for these kids was watching strange Westerners dressed up in funny clothes.

It was rare enough in those days for them to see a white-skinned person and it’s possible they had never before seen a white child.

A woman came to stroke my arm, fascinated by my pale colour.

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Our first home in Phnom Penh was a flat overlooking the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers. Looking over the balcony, I saw children playing on the pavement below and ventured down to meet them. We had no common language but in the way kids do, we began a game in which we held hands and swung each other around.

Next thing, the child whose hand I’d been holding was on the ground clutching a skinned knee and wailing, whereupon an adult appeared, looking at me reproachfully. I knew they thought it was my fault, that I’d let go on purpose. I was a horrible bullying colonial. I crept back upstairs to hide.

The first thing my father had told me, upon arrival, was that if beggars approached me in the street I was to tell them to GO AWAY! Which had already indicated to me that there was a gap between those people and us. Apparently father believed we were more deserving, yet we were the visitors. I was only 8 years old, but this seemed not quite right to me.

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Even before we went to Cambodia I had felt different, but in another way entirely.

Although our parents didn’t speak much of it, children in England were well aware of the recent world war, playing as they did in the bomb sites. Perhaps those kids felt like me, somehow less because we’d been born after and had not suffered as our elders did. I have always been afraid that I would have been a dreadful coward if I’d lived then.

Growing up I thought it was important to be brave and being untested made me feel less.

Additionally, I saw that my brother was different and not because of age and gender but in the way he was treated. Jealousy? Mother once accused me of it, but what was there to be jealous of? He was left behind in England when we went to Cambodia. My parents treated him badly and ripped apart our relationship, so that we had entirely different lives.

We have tried hard to maintain a connection but such vast geographical and experiential separation has made it very difficult.

Recognising differences isn’t always as clear as night and day or dark and light, of course.

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There’s not always a shining light or a beacon to follow. Decisions often call for weighing the odds, the fors and the againsts. And sometimes they are evenly balanced which can lead to no decision taken. I am sure everyone has been through this a time or two.

At the age of 77, I can safely recommend that you listen to your instinct rather than your head or your heart. How do you know instinct? For me it’s a thought that occurs unbidden, that I recognise instantly as the right thing.

It’s not a matter of having great faith in myself because I never have. Quite the opposite.

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But the older I get, the more I feel that to a very large extent we are directed by FATE.

For many years I was dissatisfied with life, angry about early experiences that had set me on a path I didn’t care to follow yet didn’t know how to leave.

Deeply depressed, I forced myself to seek professional help but then was far too inhibited to unload my troubles. I felt guilty about unburdening myself on my therapists! I didn’t want to disappoint them, so said yes, I felt better when the reverse was true.

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Messed up, for sure, but I was not totally stupid, so I picked up a few books. The internet gave me access to all sorts of information and I extracted bits and pieces that made sense for me.

Having my spine collapse in 2006 caused me to retire sooner than I intended and recovering from two major surgeries took a very long time. In a strange way, though, it was what I needed. For a long time I had feared retirement. I felt that once I was “ex-BA”, I would lose my identity and become a non-person. I daresay most people experience some version of this. I had entertained the idea of moving to Utah to volunteer at Best Friends Animal Society.

Losing so much of my mobility forced me to retire and took away my ability to volunteer in any meaningful way, so I looked for alternatives, which led to fostering and re-homing down-on-their-luck cats.

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It was hard work and often painful, but gradually I learned to unwind and go with the flow.

Eventually, I became relaxed enough to take the ultimate leap of faith, selling my house near Seattle and moving back to New York State to a community where I knew not a single soul.

When I packed up my physical belongings, I also bundled up all the emotional stuff, tied it in a big knot and abandoned it. Somewhere between Seattle and New York something shifted. By the time we landed at JFK, jet-lagged and exhausted, a weight had lifted.

It was quite extraordinarily liberating. I laughed loudly for the first time in years. For some time after settling in, I waited for the other shoe to drop. Surely what I was experiencing was some sort of hysteria? But it has been 7 years now. The depression has not returned.

Life is not perfect. Perfection would leave you nothing to dream about or hope for.

There are many things I would like to have been different, but who can say whether achieving them would not have led to terrible disappointment or heartbreak?

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In these troubled times, life is very uncertain and my little world could easily fall apart. Perhaps then that other shoe will drop. Many more alternatives may need to be found and it is likely I shall not care for them.

In the meantime though, I remain grateful for what I have and what I have had. I can never forget the faces of so many who suffered and they were such a small representation of the millions on this planet who live in permanent torment and deprivation.

One should never forget, but for the grace of God or Fate – we could too.

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