It’s not an Eureka Moment, but more of a reminder that has to do with words like “empathy” and “caring” and caring enough to do your part to bring about positive change.
Easier said than done, especially when living in what is largely an apathetic city like Hong Kong has become and where if something doesn’t come banging on your door, the mind shuts down. It’s too much trouble to bother because, hey, it doesn’t affect me.
What children have been subjected to during those lockdown years, and what they’re struggling to understand as they try to leave that cage from which they have been trapped, had their wings clipped and are trying to learn to fly again, is a daunting task.
They need help.
And here, this help goes beyond Thanking all those, who, through largely intuitive skills with which they were born, are doing everything they can to help this next generation see a future.
It’s something that constantly needs work to break through, but getting here should not be a chore, but a joy.
My one week of mandatory hotel isolation after returning to Hong Kong, and before that, the four hours of having to follow the drill of walking around around around and around the airport and going from one checkpoint counter to the next has changed me forever.
I don’t like the feeling, but I accept it.
I am still taking baby steps to process everything that I went through with only my mind for company.
The mind is a fragile place where we’re all different and have our own ways of dealing with invisible obstacles.
Myself aside, I have been thinking about kids, especially those under, let’s say, eight years of age who were forced to spend at least three of those years in lockdown mode with no communication with those their own age and growing up thinking that seeing people wearing masks was the norm.
What else were they thinking and what else are they growing up thinking?
Listening to Actress Kate Winslet and her brilliant recent BAFTA speech after winning the Best Actress award for “I Am Ruth” about a happy and loving mother who sees her losing her daughter to the “dark web” or whatever it’s called, and where she addressed all the darkness hiding in the cracks of what’s called “social media”- and how this is accepted without questioning.
From where I am looking at things, there’s all the other random questioning going on in the world and which is constantly being turned into an upside down fruitcake.
At least to me, life’s priorities are becoming “lowarities” and allowed to happen shows the many things that have gone wrong in this world to which we were born.
To many, money still cures all ills. So does that heady mixture of ignorance and arrogance and avoiding the problems at hand with lines that only show up hypocrisy.
High avoidance like this almost always comes from those who are cozily smug in the materialistic worlds they have created for themselves and where they cannot or refuse to see the forest for the trees.
It’s glib and vacuous corporate speak.
We really don’t need to hear any of this because it’s pointless, irrelevant and embarrassingly hypocritical.
Where are we heading today? No idea.
We are all different and what I can do is create- write poetry, create songs, make films and do everything I know that I can to make a difference and open those young minds still trapped inside invisible cages and try and give them light and the wings to fly.
Help and try to show them what living without fear is all about.
Maybe I will learn something from them.
Often, child is father to the man.
Copyright © Hans Ebert