To heal our nation, we need to heal ourselves
“You can’t heal a country unless you’ve healed yourself.”
The doctor saw something on my face that didn’t have to do with my recent flu attack (not COVID). I don’t know if he had been seeing too much of this– patients walking in with generalised anxiety. Could be crime (still January 2023–already 47 murders), gridlock traffic, rising food, gas, and electricity prices, more stolen cars, and more break-ins. Rage runs everywhere, frothing from people’s mouths and clenching fists. A small trigger and out it comes, full-on filthy language, outright abuse, and licence to call people anything.
People are going from mild annoyance over a remark or situation to 100 per cent to nuclear rage in five seconds. I know you feel it, I feel it, we’ve heard it from the professionals that abusers, name callers tend to be people who are sick of themselves, had terrible childhoods, detest themselves, are sick of their lives, have no joy within themselves, are all ego. Themselves destroyed, want to destroy the joy in others. Why are we ‘shocked’ at the daily bloodshedding? It’s a question of degree. Levels of rage that stop just short of murder exist around us.
Last week one of the world’s youngest and most admired leaders, Jacinda Ardern, announced she was standing down as New Zealand’s Prime Minister. We are speaking of Ardern, who earned global praise for her handling of the 2019 Christchurch massacre, where a gunman killed 50 people.
She wore a hijab the following day to prevent mob retribution to a community and banned assault weapons. The King Center from the US tweeted, “there’s a leader with love on full display and most significantly, Judith Collins, from the Opposition National Party, told Parliament the Prime Minister had been “outstanding”. Can you imagine that in T&T? A collaboration of government and opposition in the interest of the people on the gang legislation for a start? Nope, not happening.
How much more proof do we need that our politicians are not healed, that they would rather hurt the other side, and hold on to enemy-like vengeance rather than act as leaders who cooperate in the people’s interest? So, Ardern resigned. Ardern, who carried her country through a volcanic eruption, handled the COVID-19 pandemic with the singular goal of saving the lives of her citizens, who took tough measures to handle the economic downturn.
Why? She is just 42, with many terms ahead of her. Here’s a guess. During her five-and-a-half terms as Prime Minister, Arden has been subjected to what her fiancé, Clarke Gayford, called ‘vile abuse’—(this is apart from protests outside Parliament on lockdown measures).
There was online trolling, the talk that after giving birth she was a part-time PM. There were the lies, that her fiancé was under police investigation. There were also, reportedly, death threats. Abuse must have played some part in Ardern’s announcement, who admitted she no longer had “enough in the tank to do it justice.” She had hoped, she said, for one more year, including an election campaign, perhaps another term in office, but in the end, could not do it. That was unsaid. Instead, she said, “My overwhelming experience in this job of New Zealand and New Zealanders has been one of love, empathy and kindness… Politicians are human. We give all that we can, for as long as we can, and then it’s time,” she said. “And for me, it’s time.”
While criticism and even abuse towards leaders are ubiquitous worldwide (the pandemic showed us this), the distressing thing about our unhealed islands is that abuse towards our leaders so often comes from peers, abuse that has nothing to do with the job or the people’s work but out of the unhealed sickness of their souls. In recent times abuse of parliamentary privilege has been particularly vile, and racist, the name-calling too disgusting to repeat.
New Zealand has lost a great leader, but the world’s politicians have been given potent lessons: not to engage with abuse, to be unafraid to lead with the heart, with empathy and love, even while taking tough decisions; to put country interest ahead of political points and in her words, if you’re going to leave, “leave with a brass band.” As a people, we are always throwing up our hands in the air or looking for someone to blame. The doctor is correct. To heal our nation, we each need to heal, one person at a time.