Friday 24 June 2016

RAIN, RAIN, I WISH WE HAD REMAINED

Yesterday it poured all day, and long into the night. June's roses have taken quite a beating. Will they recover?

At the hospital my stats were not promising: temperature - 37.7 and pulse - 113. The immunology team decided against my receiving intravenous immunoglobulins. Two weeks of antibiotics were prescribed and I was sent home. Unfortunately, a nurse had already hooked up one of my Ig bottles, which would sadly have to be discarded. I regret the waste of such valuable, life saving medicine. But deeply appreciate the nursing staff's concern in making sure I was the priority. I feel so loved by my team of nurses at the hospital; I am seen. Really seen.

As a patient I have to trust many others with my life. I have to trust that when they say they know more than I do, they really do know more. I have to trust that I matter. As a citizen of a country, we have to trust our lives do matter in the hands of those elected.

The vote to leave Europe was not my choice, but democracy is. I value my right to vote and the right of others to vote as they see fit. But sadly, as google analysts are proving by the discovery that many in the UK don't know what the EU is, let alone what leaving it will constitute, what has come to be has come to be as much out of fear and ignorance as anything else.

When a girl like Malala Yousafzai speaks out about the importance of education for the millions of girls who are unfortunate enough to be kept out of school, she is also speaking up for education itself. So often we, the educated privileged, don't know about our own governments, let alone global policies. Worst of all, how many of us can recite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?  It should be the most important piece of literature any student learns. Imprinted on our minds once we leave school and go beyond into the world of Others. That word that scares so many of us.

Shall we begin to recite together? Here we go... 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.' And sisterhood.

It is still raining. But we are together, reading and remembering some of the most beautiful words of our human language. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the commission that drew up the text of the Universal Declaration, was considered the driving force behind its adoption in Paris in December 1948.