I'm going to a funeral tomorrow.
I'm not saying that to get any kind of sympathy or to publicise myself. Honestly.
The funeral is for an incredible woman, someone who I've come to admire and look up to over the last year. I won't go into detail about her story because it's not mine to tell, it's her families and I wouldn't put something like that out there in the public arena. She had an enduring illness that she thought she'd been several months ago and in the last four weeks went from feeling ill to passing away surrounded by her nearest and dearest.
Tragic doesn't begin to explain it. Angry can't sum up how the people around her feel.
But this blog entry isn't about that. It's not about her death or how people were affected by it. As I've said, that's someone elses story, certainly not mine to tell.
This post is about people. It's about their attitude to one another and a sense of community, or lack of.
To provide a bit of context, I managed this person...let's call her Sally.
When she became ill a year ago I actively supported her by including her in team social events, inviting her to team meetings (on her terms and when she felt strong enough), calling her every week to check in and see if there was anything I could and as a wider team we clubbed together and bought her things just to make her feel better.
This last month when she became ill, when it became much worse, I fought tooth and nail with management and HR to make sure that we could provide whatever support, emotional and financial, that we could as an employer to relieve any worry she had and try and relieve some little burden. Colleages (and friends) or mine would go and visit just to have a cup of tea and provide company. They would bring magazines, smiles and the best company possible.
Just because they could.
In fact they made a point of visiting two days before she died so she knew she was loved and thought of. So they could bring whatever comfort they could to a woman struggling with the end of her life. So she would know she would be remembered.
The things that we all did were small kindnesses, the very basic things that we could do for another person.
This morning at our departmental meeting the three of us were specifically singled out and thanked for the support we had offered Sally in the last weeks of her life. It was my manager thanking us (he's a great guy) and while I appreciated the sentiment, I was embarrassed to be thanked for something that should have been a given.
I would have made the same effort for anyone in my team. If I'm honest I would make the same effort for pretty much anyone I know. When I spoke to the other people mentioned they agreed that they would do the same.
I'm coming to a point soon, honestly, just stay with me through this.
It got me thinking about out attitudes towards our fellow man. How we relate to them, the effort we make and what we think we should or could do. So my question is this: has basic human kindness gone out of the world?
In the last 24 hours the British government has stated that it wants to recruit and train 1 millions volunteers to work with elderly people with dementia, to become "dementia friends". More than 700 people are affected by dementia in England alone, leading to it being called a national epidemic.
Anyone interested in taking part can find more info
here.
In the last 10 years the numbers of people volunteering with the elderly has decreased, and as times have gotten hard, people have become more inward looking, less likely to donate even their time or help people around them. In recent decades that would have been unthinkable. The concept of community, togetherness and supporting your fellow many was all pervading in many communities, particularly those from deprived areas. There was a definite sense of "we're in this together" that has disappeared in past years.
Have people stopped caring about one another?
I volunteer every Tuesday night with an LGBT youth group. I don't do it for any other reason other than as a gay man and member of the LGBT community I feel I should. I have been incredibly fortunate to have the friends, family and support I have and have had a very positive experience coming out (ok it was 11 years ago, but still, I'm only 29) and I felt that I had to give something back to my community.
When friends found out some of them where horrified I was volunteering. "How can you be bothered?" "Where do you find the time?" "I'm far too busy to do anything like that!". Some of these comments have come from people who, while they have busy jobs, spend their evenings doing very little.
My better half recently helped an old man in the street who had fallen over and was in some distress. This was in front of a busy set of bus stops and he was the ONLY person who moved to help this very vulnerable man.
This isn't to say that we are virtuous, generous people, far from it. But the way we've been raised, the examples we had as children and the friends we have in our lives make this not unusual things to do. Looking at the wider world it seems to be increasingly rare to find people willing to embrace that sense of community, to put themselves out for their fellow man.
So, my friends, I ask you, has the kindness gone out of the world? Are we unwilling, or unable, to put ourselves out for one another? Do we still retain a sense of community where we live?
