Tag Archives: respect

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Tom Kelsall is deeply, deeply ashamed of who we are – who we teach our children to be. What happened to our proud reserve? What happened to our stiff upper lip, our absolute loyalty, and our deep sense of community? Why is this not being taught to our children?

Instead we have a 40 year history laced with hatred, failure of respect for anyone and anything, and glee in the suffering of others.

Well, I want no part of it. I will try to teach my children love and respect for things, animals, people, possessions, feelings, needs, hopes and dreams. I will teach my children that colours, (whether of flags, skin, clothes, hair or whatever) while not meaningless, don’t change who a person IS.

I will try to teach my children to judge others by their actions and not their existence. In the same breath I will teach them that those actions may be brought about by a different set of protocols than those my child knows. At all opportunities I will try to teach my child to learn what they can when the opportunity presents itself and to open their minds to new things and leave them open forever.

I want no part of anything which feeds hatred, fear and anger. I want no part of anything which leads to ruin, pain and destruction. I will always choose a path where I see the least pain, ruin and destruction.

Sometimes I will choose poorly – and that is the sad part of being human. We cannot know everything about what lies down a particular path… all we can do is choose the best path based on our knowledge at the time. Sometimes, being human, even the decision making process fails us.., and a poor choice is made in the face of the knowledge.

But know this – this is my promise to all the people I know and will come to know:I will never set out on any path; wise, poor, good or bad; with the aim to hurt another. I might find that hurting one is less than hurting two, and choose that path – but I will never choose a path BECAUSE of the pain I can cause another.

(My aim might waver at times and become selfish (in which cases I will be choosing the least pain for myself alone); but I will do my best to atone for that when I admit it to myself – and I will do my best to avoid having to).

I would invite my friends to share this as their own promise; but I know for a fact that everyone is different and that everyone will choose different words or different phrases.

Let’s stand up for who WE are, and stand against those in London, Birmingham and Wolverhampton (so far :( ) who don’t share our way.

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I’ve always prided myself on my ability to take what life throws at me, pick myself up and carry on. By British standards, I reckon I’ve had a fair bit to deal with over the last 25 years… and it’s pretty much always turned out OK in the end if I just make sure I do what I can, when I can; and to just get on with things.

HOWEVER

Nothing prepared me for last week and the week before’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The sheer levels of devastation in a country we all know as advanced and civilised (by our own standards!) is quite incredible. But… do we see pictures of fathers, mothers and children wailing and bemoaning their fate? Do we see people whose lives are quite clearly torn apart at the roots? We most certainly do not. We see people from all age groups and all walks of life picking themselves up, and then moving to the nearest pile of rubble and picking it up, piece by piece. We see people who mention that there’s quite a bit of work to do before things get back to normal. We see people honouring those they lost, not by mourning inconsolably, but by immediately starting the work needed to get back on track.

This… this STOICISM is something I will only aspire to for the rest of my life. I don’t think I will ever achieve anything like it. I briefly spoke to my Wife about it and she mentioned that earthquake culture is taught to the Japanese from an early age; however I don’t believe that education alone can produce this indescribable ability to take a life threatening blow without so much as a flinch.

You have my deepest respect, people of Japan. Meaningless though it might be, you have it.