We were reminiscing and I recalled my group of friends when I was sixteen years old and just about to leave school. War was raging in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia as it was then) and we were about to be scattered across the world.
I recall their names and characters, how we celebrated our differences and loved each other. We were a mix of boarders and day scholars and had spent time in the holidays at each other's homes, and often gathered together for meals and adventures. We belonged to each other as the war had stripped away any pretence of being anything but ourselves and we appreciated our loving bonds.
There were no mobile phones in those days or social media, and we lost touch, yet I am sure our hearts remember.
I feel a longing in all of us for the core of belonging and the loving bonds of friendship.
Throughout history, those fuelled by the need to control others, serving whatever agenda they hold, set out to divide and conquer. It is how they rise.
We have forgotten how to be together and hold differing opinions. Acceptance is being battered into submission by a cancel culture, and words are perceived as a personal threat.
Fear is rife and that feeds our need to retreat and protect. We are watching it play out where people are being held to account because they not only hold opinions but in voicing them, they may use a word that some find offensive. All hell breaks loose then. When did we start to think that our feelings are someone else's responsibility?
Change can come at the grassroots level. In our day-to-day rounds, how we treat each other, listen, ponder, show kindness and check our understanding of another's point of view. Give things time to evolve. Pause. Quieten our need to be right. Come from a place of love, not fear. Be gentle.
It starts with how we treat each other.
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." ~ Rumi