Choosing Humanity in Times of Crisis
Yesterday the world witnessed the murder of Charlie Kirk, a stout conservative activist, at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on the first stop of his American Comeback Tour. Regardless of where you stand politically, this is a tragic moment that will mark 2025 forever and has the potential to shape the political climate of the future years, even decades to come.
The full spectrum of emotions, behaviours and sentiments of humanity are on full display right now. The social media timeline is inundated with the shocking video footage of the moment Charlie was shot. Our feeds are full with heavy grief, troubling rhetoric, anger, blame, sadness, and more. Many of the older generation right now are likening this time to the 60’s and the 70’s, citing that they have seen this troubling type of political violence before in their lifetimes; and how equally saddening it is that we are seeing it again.
I too, like everyone else, have seen the posts, the articles and the news; and I felt compelled to write today.
As writers, creatives, in times like these; this is where the pen is mightier then the sword.
It is possible to grieve a loss without agreeing with someone’s ideology. It is possible to feel the weight of a human life taken violently and too soon, without endorsing the beliefs they held.
This is the complicated truth of what it means to be human: we are allowed to hold grief and disagreement in the same hand.
As I woke up this morning and sat with my coffee in hand, I made the choice to leave my phone turned off and sit with my thoughts for a moment. In a week from now, the pre-orders of Anthologia 2 officially begin. It is such a great honour for me to be included in a line-up of powerful, brave women in this book.
But my own words have hung heavy on my heart overnight.
In my contribution to the book, I talk about what it means to be human in times of crisis. The weight of grappling with our emotions, our personal circumstances, while having two feet on the ground in environments of crisis, loss, upheaval. I specifically talk about my time spent on a humanitarian mission over a decade ago, and that at the time I ventured on that journey there was a lot of war, natural disasters and civil unrest in our world.
It is incredibly striking to me that not much has changed, and that the sentiment behind the words of mine that are about to be published are timeless, and still deeply, profoundly relevant today.
We are living through a time of unprecedented exposure to world news, graphic content, and the best and worst of human behaviours. Our phones could be seen as blessings and curses. On one hand, we are more interconnected then ever. And the flip side of being more interconnected than ever is that we are now privy to an absolute overload of information at any given time.
You can feel it, on the streets, in our social feeds, in the way people speak to one another with less grace, less curiosity, more urgency, more fear. The temperature is rising, globally. And when violence becomes part of the political vocabulary, we cross a line that is much harder to step back from.
I write this messy article, a personal entry if you will, to remind myself and anyone reading that humanity is, I believe, our greatest gift. And our greatest responsibility.
Because violence, no matter where it comes from, no matter who it targets, does not cleanse or solve the larger issues at hand. It contaminates. It hardens the walls between us and dehumanises us in the process. It tells us there is no path forward but through destruction.
And that is a lie. That is propaganda I will not fall for.
This is not a Right versus Left issue. This is not a debate about who was more wrong, or who is more justified. This is a humanity issue. And we must fight, with every fibre of our being, not to be consumed by the conditions being created around us: conditions seeded in hate, and reinforced by fear.
We must rise. Together.
We must resist the temptation to match violence with violence. We must write. We must speak. We must mourn and feel it all; but like I say in my work in Anthologia 2, we must also alchemise the pain.
We must not let it transform us, but rather, we must transform the pain into something powerful, meaningful.
I really truly believe it is the artists, the writers, the poets, who will help us hold the mirror up during these times. Those who are willing to feel deeply, grapple with emotions to find meaning, and inquire with the human spirit what the path forward should be.
We need politicians to remember they are humans before they are representatives of a party. We need them to reach across divides, to choose conversation instead of chaos, to model what it looks like to lead with compassion, maturity and humanity.
It is for these reasons that I feel the timing of Anthologia 2 is incredibly important. A collection of women’s voices, coming together to cover so many vital aspects of the human experience. Sharing stories of grief, loss, shame, growth, and total transformation to give what could be considered a blueprint for navigating a rapidly changing world.
While there are many ugly things happening right now in our world, I choose to focus on the beautiful ones. The ones that are creating pockets of value, happiness, love.
I really believe that what we give our attention to, we amplify and we empower.
So, take this as a reminder to amplify more of what you want in your life, your family, your country. Don’t succumb to the hate and the division.
There is a path forward that does not require bloodshed.
Choose peace. Choose compassion. Choose humanity.
