Hey Guys,
Frank Sinatra once sang that life went in Cycles, that always there's laughter and then the tears. Life has a habit of not letting you go smooth, always hiding something else around the corner.
The song always made a lot of sense to me. I mean it is a pretty simple sentiment. Life comes and goes, we all exist in a larger scheme. Listening to it tonight, it kind of struck me. I go through cycles myself. I'm kind of in the middle of one now, and that is perfectly normal for me it would seem. As normal as eating 6 Mars bars in a row on a whim. But hey that happens I guess.
I am going somewhere with this, I promise.
After that I started to think about how we all look at things differently. I recently had one of my colleagues (I know right, I'm employable! who woulda thought it) called me bipolar to some extent. I understood what they meant by that so I disn't really take it as an insult. But what it got me thinking was this:
Why do we need to label people in such a way?
I know it was a completely innocent comment, but at the same time it was a clear observation that I acted in some way different from that person. And for that reason I was assigned a label, a title, a name, a derogative term even. It's as though as a race we can't stop ourselves from differentaiting all the different people until we are little more than bricks in a wall, numbers in a machine.
I know it may seem a bit funny that I should react so strongly to a harmless comment as such, but it really angers me in principle. As people we have a society that accepts everyone, but makes sure they are labeled and filed accordingly. We're constantly referring to people as gay, straighr, ugly, pretty, crazy, free-spirited, wasted and so many other terms, it seems to me that we spend far too long trying to file people away, and not enough time getting out what they have to say.
The other thing I wanna talk about is a pretty major story I guess. I'm sure you've all heard about the death of Gary Speed on Sunday.
If not:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15910648.stm
Now I don't really wanna add too much to what has already been said, other than his loss is a tragedy to football and his family, and my thoughts are with them at this time. The point I wanna make is to do with how no-one knew what was going on with him.
Obviously we don't and may never know the exact reason that Gary Speed took his own life. It's also clear that no one expected or knew anything about it. This asks the question, how does a person hide so well?
In our society, that we habitually, pigeon hole and number people, we still can't identify those vulnerable to themselves. I find that quite shocking. I find it a disgrace in fact, that we as humans, find it easy to criticize and make fun of difference. Yet we struggle to acknowledge those who are different, those who need help and those in need of a label to help them cope.
The point I'm trying to get at is that we all spend so much time interacting with each other, judging each other, labeling each other. In this period, where we have an all time high of suicides, especially in the young male demographic, can't we as a race start to look out for each other?
What we lost in Gary Speed, I can only attribute to one factor. That no one noticed. And that is the real tragedy, that we as people have forgotten to notice each others existence anymore.
Why have we let it get that way?
Peace out
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