“There’s a dream, I feel
So rare, so real
The world in union
The world as one”
Recently I listened to the track “World in Union” from the
Rugby world cup. It broke my heart. It’s such a beautiful song; musically very powerful
and lyrically impacting, but it made me burst into tears. And I mean real life, man sized tears.
I often can get emotional listening to music – it is after
all the biggest trigger for emotion.
This is why music gets used in cinema, in television and in theatre. The
use of music guides how we connect emotionally to what is taking place in front
of our eyes, bringing comfort and creating tension with the various swells and
pulses of the melody. The right chord
progression mixed with powerful words can reduce me to tears in a heartbeat
with just the sheer brilliance of it.
But I didn’t cry in awe of this song, nor did I cry because
of its powerful message.
This song tore me to shreds because everything it spoke of, every
positive word and encouraging phrase is so far removed from how the world
actually is. I sat there and asked the
question “is this what we’re heading towards?” and it crushed me when I
realised the answer was no.
I recently watched the movie “Maleficent”. Right at the
start of the movie, the narrator says something about the two kingdoms being
united by either a great hero, or a great villain. There’s an imbalance in the
world, I feel, because the people who think they are the heroes can’t unite
people behind them based on their own perception of who they are, so they
create great villains and rally others to support their cause. Nothing unites people faster than a common
enemy!
So what is it that is missing from the human condition that
stops us being united? It seems so easy. I think predominantly most people want
this. Anger and hatred are such
cumbersome feelings to carry around, so why aren’t we making it easier on
ourselves, what is holding us back from such an amazing step forward?
Having spent the last twenty four hours really dwelling on
it, I’ve come to one conclusion:
What is missing is tolerance.
This is difficult for me to understand because my parents
raised my brother and I to never judge anyone, to respect everyone’s decisions
and choices and to realise that ultimately we are all the same underneath. My dad told me once that he knew he had
taught us well when we had been watching a news report that was highlighting
racism. I was quite young, so there’s a good chance it was related to apartheid
in South Africa. Dad said my brother and
I had both watched whatever the story was and then had asked him to explain why
it was happening. When dad told us that
one group of people was being mistreated because of the colour of their skin,
my brother and I were shocked and both said “but they’re just the same as
everyone else, they’re all people”.
But intolerance isn’t confined to the colour of skin
sadly. Disunity in the world rears its
head in so many different forms lately that something seems to have been forgotten.
We’re all people.
Tolerance is essential.
I’m not going to stand by my childish naivety and say we’re all the
same, because we’re not. We are,
inherently, different. Not everyone is
born into the world with the same opportunities, no matter how many people tell
you that we are. Kate, Duchess of
Cornwall and my sister-in-law are both currently expecting babies and I can
guarantee that those children will have vastly different opportunities and
experiences in life. Every child is born
into different circumstances, with different cultural backgrounds, different
religious backgrounds and different social backgrounds. But every child can be
taught the value of humanity. Every
child can be taught acceptance, justice, respect, compassion and most
importantly, love. Once we can, the
world over, teach our children that, despite our differences, humanity is
equal, we can begin to not only accept the differences, but celebrate them.
It takes more though than teaching our children these
values. They have to be modelled by
those in leadership and this is where, currently, the system has broken
down. Should I ever have children, I can
teach them tolerance, but as long as outdated and archaic laws and practices
are in place, the world will never change and perhaps my children will sit as
heartbroken as I am by a message in a song someday that seems so far out of
reach.
