Doing the Right Thing

"It doesn't matter what you do in life," I tell our 17 year old daughter, Mia,  in a "let-me-give-you-some-motherly-advice," sort of way, " as long as you always know you are doing  "the right thing."
Mia looks at me and I can feel a debate brewing.
" What do you mean?" she asks.
I pause, trying to clarify my thoughts, Mia has a way of unravelling my certainties.
" I mean that however inconvenient or scary something is, if it's the right thing to do, you should do it anyway," I say, proud of my explanation.
" But how do you know if something is the right thing to do?"  she asks.
And so I tell a story.
" When I was 14," I say, " one of my best friends died while I was on holiday.  We didn't have mobile phones then, so I didn't find out until we got back...."
And suddenly I am there again in that moment, climbing out of the car tanned and happy, my grandmother, ashen-faced, whispering the news to my mum. My mum telling me. Me screaming....but that is not what the story is about.
" I had missed the funeral," I continue, " it was while we were on holiday. I didn't have a chance to say goodbye or to see her parents.
 And the worst thing of all was that the last conversation my friend and I had had before I went away, the last conversation we ever had, was an argument.
 I can't remember what it was about.
My friend was on very strong medication for her asthma, I knew it made her moody but I couldn't help rising to the bait.
 I should have phoned her back, I  should have said that I was sorry, that i didn't want to argue with her.
I should have done the right thing.
 But I was a teenager, convinced of my rightness and everyone else's wrongness, so I didn't.
 I left for holiday without speaking to her again. 
For days after we got back, after I found out she was dead, I would peer into people's faces, trying to make them fit into the hole in the world where my friend should be. 
I kept thinking I saw her walking just in front of me or heard her bubbling laughter in the room next door. 
And worst of all, for days and days, I kept trying not to think about the thing I knew I had to do. 
Kept pretending that I was too busy, had too much homework, had to buy my friends' birthday presents.
 Anything to avoid it. 
 Anything to avoid going to see  her parents. 
When she was alive we had spent hours in each other's houses. 
 Now that she was gone, the thought of going back to her house, of seeing her mum who always bought us Wagonwheels and made us lemon squash to drink, was petrifying. 
She was an only child, the centre of their universe and she was gone. 
I didn't know how to face the immensity of their grief.
 But I knew I had to. 
I knew it was the right thing to do 
" And did you/" asks Mia, " did you go and see them."
" I did," I say, ' I sat on the sofa and we smiled at each other and I talked about school and they nodded and in the emptiness behind their eyes, I saw the scattered fragments of a world that would never seem beautiful again. 
And when I walked out of that door that day, I vowed, that, whatever else I did in my life, I would always, always do the right thing.
 However inconvenient or frightening. or unpleasant."
" But how do you know going to see them was the right thing to do?" asks Mia insistently
, " Perhaps it  just made them feel even sadder." 
" Of course it didn't," I say "it showed them how much I cared,  how much my friend meant to me."
"You make it sound so black and white,"  says Mia," right or wrong with nothing inbetween. I don't believe anything is that simple. There is no black and white, only grey.
I know you did what you thought was right. But what about them? What about her parents? What's right for one person might seem wrong to someone else. Muslim suicide bombers who kill themselves and hundreds of other people believe absolutely that what they are doing is right.  Do you think it is? "
And I am non-plussed by the powerful logic of her words, by the possibility that she is right. 
I feel the value system that I have built for myself for so many years,  crumbling around me..
And much as I would like to argue with her, my seventeen year old daughter, I find myself lost for words.

" You love it," says my husband, when I tell him of yet another friend in crisis who I am trying to help. "You love all the drama, you love the fact that they all come to you." And the implication is that It makes me feel good about myself.
And somewhere, deep down inside, I know there is a lot of truth in what he says. 
Aspiring to do the right thing, the noble thing,  means that you can wrap yourself in a blanket of altruism, your conscience safe, your sins atoned, free from finger-pointing.
But as Mia says, it's not that simple, not so black and white.
If someone we love or care about is hurt or sad or ill, we will, all of us, do anything we can to make them feel better. 
That's what caring for or loving someone means.
 It's not about making ourselves feel better, it's about stopping them feeling so bad.
And we are not being " good," or 'bad," or " right," or '"wrong," when we do it, we are simply  being human.
And perhaps our reasons for doing what we believe to be right are more selfish than we care to admit but at least they can sometimes give meaning to what seems meaningless, create hope where there was despair, create a sense of purpose where there was only  helplessness .
While I am writing this, I have received a text from a friend.
One of her son's best friends, Oliver King, died from  sudden arythmic death syndrome(SADS) when he was 12 years old.
After he died his parents set up the Oliver King Foundation to raise awareness of SADS' And our friends became trustees.
I've never talked to them about why they did it, I can only guess. 
But  I think it might be because they wanted to show how much they cared, because they  because it gives Oliver's life meaning, because it helped with the helplessness, because it was completely the right thing to do.

Oiver King

The tweet says:

The OK Foundation @TheOKFoundation · 

"It is not length of life, but depth of life": Happy 16th Birthday Oliver. Missed, loved, in our thoughts every day.

Mia's right, there is no absolute right or wrong, but that should never stop us from doing what we believe is right. 
How else can I say the sorry I never got to say?
How else can we give our sometimes shallow lives, any depth?

RIP Georgina
RIP Oliver

Word Power

Amidst all the terrorist horrors of this week, I have been thinking a lot about the power of words. 
The power of words written in a holy book to induce murder and mayhem.
The power of words to make people do evil things and believe that they are good.
The power of those who can take words and shape them into phrases that inspire hatred and loathing and..passion.
Because that is truly the  power of words - the passion they evoke.
Although in England, at the moment, nothing could be further from the truth.
It's hard to imagine words less passionate or inspiring than those used by our politicians and leaders today.
Their main aim seems to be to use as many words as possible to say as little as they can get away with.
The most important thing when giving interviews or making speeches is to make sure that you have committed to nothing, alienated no one and, most importantly, have expressed no particular point of view.
Perhaps it's not surprising that a generation is growing up disaffected, apathetic and directionless.
And I'm left wondering when it was that we became a nation of planners rather than doers, of procrastinators rather than instigators, of accepters rather than dreamers.
Perhaps it's not surprising that people are open to the persuasive power of passionate words when the only other choice is the language of mundanity and inaction.
Extremists are sure of their message, clear in their beliefs, quick to react.  
Suddenly their words can give a meaning to a life that has felt meaningless, a certainty to a world where all things have seemed so uncertain, a clarity and a vision where there was only confusion and haziness.
All it takes is someone who is clever with words.

Many years ago, my half-Jewish Austrian grandmother, told me how she had once heard Hitler speak.
" He was amazing," she said, " a tiny man, standing in front of thousands of people. And even though I knew that his words were condemning me and my family to death, I found myself longing to be part of his Great Plan."
That's the power of words.
Words can make all things seem possible.
Words can convince us to do anything.
Words can fill a meaningless void with passion and direction.
Why else would masked men have stormed into an office in Paris and killed people because they drew pictures.
How else could a ten year old girl have been used for a suicide bombing in a crowded market place in Nigeria.

It's easy to blame extremism and religious fundamentalism, easy to shrug and say " it's not my fault" - but there are reasons why these ideas and beliefs are flourishing and spreading here and now. 

I have sat in so many meetings where, over a cup of tea (sometimes even with biscuits) we have discussed the problem of lack of engagement, disempowerment and disillusionment  of our most vulnerable families: young parents, workless households, ethnic minorities,those with disabilities.....the list of the disengaged or voiceless members of our communities is endless.
By the end of the meetings after many people have said lots of things, we come up with a plan. We will set a target: by a certain date in the future, the number of these families who are engaging with services will have increased by a certain percentage.
Feeling proud of ourselves, we set a date for the next meeting where new data will be looked at to see whether or not we have made any progress towards reaching our target.
That is the power of words to create the illusion of problem-solving when all they have really done is provide a framework for inaction and a justification for creating more meaningless words.
But there is something else we could do.
A way we could use the passionate power of words to do something instead of nothing.
We could agree that instead of meeting to talk about change, we use our words and actions to make it happen.
We could agree that instead of sitting and talking, we stand up and shout.
We could agree that instead of planning what to do tomorrow or next week, we do it now.
We could put back the passion and reclaim the power of words
Perhaps then, those who feel they have lost their identity won't have to turn to fundamentalism or extremism to feel that they belong.
Perhaps then, those who want to change the world can do it without becoming angry or full of hatred.
Perhaps then, the voiceless will be inspired to speak because they know they will be heard.
We all of us have the  the power of words within our grasp.
Let's use them to make the world a better, safer place.