Words cut like swords; We wield them like weapons Because we have been told they are mighty. We have forgotten Where true power lies: In offering a welcoming hand of friendship. In being willing to be gentle. - Allegra Chapman
Celebrating Eostre
It’s the Easter weekend, and I’m trying to limit the amount of chocolate my small children shovel into their faces whilst also unpicking for them why we celebrate at this time of year.
My family don’t follow a particular religion, although I have my own sense of spirituality which is mostly connected to the seasons and the rhythm of the natural world. I have every respect for people who choose to follow whatever faith speaks to their heart, but organised religion is not for me. So I aim to teach my children that different faiths exist whilst also teaching them about what matters to me, and leaving space for them to make up their own minds as they grow.
Right now, aged 2 and 4, they’re mostly interested in the chocolate.
But as with so many Christian festivals, Easter started long before the birth of Jesus. Eostre, Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, crops and the dawn, was honoured during the festival of Ostara, held at the Spring Equinox to herald the start of the year, the increasing of sunlight and the birth of spring. Eggs and rabbits, being closely associated with fertility, have always been a big element of the party (although the Anglo-Saxons hadn’t yet discovered chocolate).
Although the Christian calendar is always slightly out of line with the Earth’s, and the Spring Equinox was actually more than two weeks ago, this is still a great opportunity to celebrate new starts and rebirth.
In my house, we’ll be writing intentions for the year ahead, and burning them on a fire to release them into the universe. We’ll be spring cleaning the house and decluttering - things we no longer need will be on their way to the charity shop. We’ll be planting seeds - mostly flowers but also trying our hand at a few vegetables (we’ve had mixed success in the past!). We’ll be taking a walk in nature, followed by a family meal ending in a lavender cake (lavender being a symbol both of spring and of higher purpose or intentions, and purple being the colour of Eostre).
I’m sure there will be plenty of people ready to tell me that Easter should be a Christian festival and that that’s what I should be teaching my children, but, sorry, Eostre was there first.
Have we lost the ability to disagree?
Speaking of the Easter holidays, I was in The i paper this week, suggesting that we rethink our approach to school holidays. And plenty of people were absolutely furious with me about it.
Every time I write one of these columns - all of them intended to ask people to think about the status quo and why we do things the way we do, in case there is a better way - my Twitter mentions become a dumpster fire of angry screaming.
I understand people disagreeing with me. There are plenty of reasons to disagree. Funding would be the biggest issue, in the case of the school holidays. Of course different opinions are going to exist, there isn’t one idea that human beings have managed to establish universal agreement on (you’d think that “killing other people is wrong” would be one, but there are countries that believe that in certain circumstances it is ok, which is why they have the death penalty). But why is everyone so angry?
A huge element of happiness is our connection to other people. A huge amount of research shows that, the more connected we are, the more relationships and interactions we have, the happier we are. Talking to other people is, mostly, good for us. And sharing thoughts and ideas is how we build relationships and work together to create bigger and better ideas.
So why have we become so very bad at it?
We seem to have lost the ability to calmly and respectfully disagree with one another. We now feel the need to react viscerally, and loudly, with vehement rejection of ideas we don’t fully agree with, and we make no effort to see other points of view. It seems that no one is open to having their minds changed.
“Outraged” was a word that appeared several times in my Twitter mentions, even from people who had clearly not read the article. Was anything I’d written truly worthy of outrage? Or have we just come to see any views that don’t align with our own as automatically offensive?
Social media clearly plays a role. Behind a screen, distanced from the real human being we’re talking to, we’re all willing to go at the keyboard with more aggression than we’d use in conversation. 280 characters on Twitter doesn’t leave much space for qualifiers like, “I see where you’re coming from but I wonder if…”’
Not only online but in real life, too, we spend more and more time in echo chambers. We don’t live in the large, mixed communities that we used to. We carefully curate the people that we interact with, and retreat further into our personal spaces. We live in our little bubbles and don’t come into contact with different opinions, or people from different backgrounds and ways of life.
Then there are the political shifts we’ve lived through in recent years. From Brexit to Trump, Partygate to the “war on woke”, we’ve been bombarded with media messages designed to polarise us as much as possible. We’re currently told that we’re under threat of being cancelled, or invaded, or erased, and made to feel that there is another side that is coming for us. That we must defend ourselves at all costs.
No wonder, then, that we feel the need to go on the attack when we come into contact with members of that supposed opposing army. We don’t stop to listen to them, or try to find common ground, because we’ve been taught to believe that they’re trying to steal that ground from under our very feet.
I’m interested to know, then, what you think we can do about that? How can we start to encourage people to come back together to listen to different views, and make space for compromise, learning, shared solutions and collaboration? How can we make everyone less afraid of different views and willing to approach one another with open minds and open hearts?
Creative spark
Reading and writing are so powerful for building empathy and opening us to other views and identities. So if we want to encourage greater understanding, we can start by reading as much work by people unlike ourselves as possible. And by seeking to understand how to write other views.
Your challenge this week is to write either a non-fiction essay or a speech by a fictional character arguing passionately and enthusiastically for a point of view that you personally disagree with. Try to get into the mindset of someone who truly believes in this opposing argument, and to understand the good intentions and positive impact that lead them to this view - because no one holds a belief with bad intentions; everyone thinks their view would produce the best results, that’s why they hold on to it.
Wise words indeed. Other points of view open up the mind and potentially offer a door to a different way of being.
Oh goodness yes! Why is everyone so angry? Even within communities where working together would be to the greater good, such as disability or caring, people will argue about who has it worse, who has it harder, who understands the problems more... personally I think it’s all hard and we should all stand together to try to make things better for everyone. Maybe keeping people apart means no decisions need to be made by those in authority ...