dancingthroughchaos

“Mind the gap.” – Safety announcement introduced on the London underground in 1968 using the recorded voice of Peter Lodge, (sound engineer).

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on trains in and around London this past week so I’ve been mentally working out my routes – which line stops at which station and in which direction I need to travel for each journey etc.

It means that I’ve heard multiple disembodied announcements about which train is arriving and leaving each platform, to ‘Please stand behind the yellow line for your own safety’ (frequently ignored), to ‘Take all your belongings with you’, that ‘These doors will not open at the next station’, ‘Move forward two carriages to alight here’ etc.

The most frequent exhortation is, of course, to ‘Mind the gap between the train and the platform’.  As someone who had a terror of slatted stairs in my childhood, convinced I would somehow fall through the space between them if there were no risers, I have always embraced this command.

However, I am starting to think that all of us – train-users or not – need another, more urgent directive along the lines of: ‘Mind the gap between the train and reality.’  

The space between where we’re standing – or, what we perceive to be happening – and what’s actually happening in the world, seems to be coming more distorted, more convoluted and more distant from reality. Is any of it real any more and how can we be sure?

The news frequently spins a sensationalist perspective  as emotive and inflammatory words sprinkle reports which label individuals ‘contentious’ or ‘divisive’ when the reality is that they may just have another opinion.  It’s one thing to use this vocabulary when talking about neo-Nazis, and another when the reference is to someone referring a football match. On that basis are there any public figures, politicians or celebrities who are not those things, or are they only the ones who agree with us?  

The worst thing about living in a democracy is when the majority are singing from a different hymn sheet from your own.  We’re all living with the consequences of Brexit regardless of how we voted. It means that less represented voices can feel unheard, convictions discounted and opinions disparaged. Contrary to appearances, shouting louder is seldom the answer but then, what is?

If we could regain the art of being more ready to listen before we speak; come alongside one another instead of going head-to-head in combative attitudes; use measured language rather than polarising words; refrain from lumping groups of people together en masse rather than seeing people as individuals and acknowledging nuances which allow that two things can be true at once, life might feel safer as well as calmer for all of us.

If our media is to be believed, people are introducing Sharia law in London, eating swans and who knows what else.  Erroneously interchanging the terms ‘asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’ and ‘illegal immigrant’ is, apparently causing national hysteria (is it though? I’m certainly glad someone is pointing out the important differences), and groups of unhappy people appear determined to hijack our national flag.  

I’m only just back from South Africa so may have missed some things but, in reality, I’m fairly confident that most people are currently expressing concern about corruption, hypocrisy and financial waste in government, the prospect of rising taxes and the hikes in food prices.

When it’s become increasingly difficult to differentiate fact from fiction, Edward Mole’s 1884 hymn carries timeless truth: ‘On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.’

It was written in the year that the Greenwich meridian was fixed, establishing global times; the foundation of the Statue of Liberty was laid in New York, while a financial crisis (‘The Panic of 1884’) was triggered by the collapse of a brokerage firm.  Elsewhere, a European conference debated their expansion and regulation of colonisation in Africa as conflicts unfolded in Vietnam (Sino-French), Sudan (Sudanese-British) and a civil war in Peru.

I don’t think Mr Mole was suggesting people should bury their heads in the sand then or now, but, like a sailor who keeps his eyes on the horizon or a ballerina twirling around, staying focused can be a life-saver.  If we wallow in so-called ‘news’ without filtering or asking questions about the veracity of reports, we may well find ourselves flailing.  The unshakeable Rock of Christ doesn’t ignore contemporary storms and disarray, or invite us to live in an illusionary la-la land, but it does give us focus and perspective if we choose to plant our feet there.

Where will you choose to stand?

[All images: Pixabay, with thanks.]