Reverend Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain for the University of Sussex
The other day I was idly reflecting on the different houses and flats I have lived in over my lifetime. I counted 42 across the four countries I have lived in. (In terms of schools attended, this would include five different primary schools, two middle schools and – surprisingly – one senior high school). Needless to say, I grew up with a sense of impermanence with regards to my physical environments. The experience of change, mainly connected to my work or education, continued until recent times. Changes other than my physical situation or location have of course also featured and, at times, been traumatic: the loss of family and friends, relationships that have ended. You too will have had similar experiences.
Where change happens without choice, it can undermine, stress, and lay the ground for conflict. I worked for an organisation named ‘Conflict and Change, Ltd.’ It started out as a charity providing conciliation in neighbourhood disputes, using local volunteers in the process. It eventually evolved a range of different strategies for supporting local people and organisations experiencing the trauma of conflict. The name of the organisation quite consciously acknowledged that the local borough in which it was located had undergone, in a relatively short span of time, immense changes: the closure of the docks that had been a major source of employment; waves of demographic change; and massive changes due to the impact of developing marshland along the Thames. The underlying dynamic of rapid change underpinned many of the conflicts with which we worked, regardless of the presenting issues, such as parking, noise, boundary disputes and harassment.
The first mediation I helped facilitate involved an elderly white widower and a local Asian shopkeeper. The presenting issue involved the use of the parking space outside the elderly widower’s house. The shopkeeper was also concerned about the verbal and racial abuse being dished out by the widower. In the telling of their stories, the widower (who, by the way, did not even have a car and was banned from driving) revealed that he had lived in the same house for 70 years. Two years earlier he had lost his wife. The community had changed around him and he had incurred loss at different levels, and there was a sense of powerless in it all. He had little choice. His neighbour, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper and part-time youth worker in the neighbouring borough of Tower Hamlets, shared what it was like to live in a place where he was often abused for his nationality and religion.
Both were still powerless amid the change swirling around them. Their choices were limited to what they could decide to do in the present with regards to their relationship. But hearing about each other’s life journey somehow created an empathy between them and an amicable way forward was agreed by both people. They were able to ‘stay human’, to use a phrase.
We may not feel that we have a lot of choice amid the changes facing us, be they institutional changes or just those changes that take place in the course of living – ageing, relationships, loss and the attending process of grief. Whether we challenge or simply accept change when it happens, we always have the choice to ‘stay human’ in our relationships with one another.
Perhaps being able to see changes, and the conflicts to which they sometimes give rise, as opportunities is key. I have quoted Duke Leto, a character in Dune, and his advice to his son prior to leaving his home before, so do forgive the repetition:
“A person needs new experiences. It jars something deep inside, allowing them to grow. Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
Duke Leto may not be a real bloke, but his advice may go a long way toward helping us stay human with each other amid those changes in the world over which we have little control.