ALL LIVES MATTER AND YOU TOO

We live in an unfair world. There are injustices everywhere. We are all benefiting from someone somewhere at sometime who spoke up on our behalf.

But it makes me cringe when those who speak up label themselves.

I suppose it began for me with feminism. I owe a great deal to the equality movement. I remember reading an excerpt from an Austrian Princess at the museum at the foot of Neuschwanstein who was ashamed to be allowed to study beside men. There was never any self-consciousness about me attending university. I am not sure that the reservations my parents had for me for medical school had all to do with my gender. But I will never in this lifetime be equal to my male colleagues, even often in nursing. If I stand at the bedside with a male nurse or 21 year old male medical school student, with my ID and uniform labelled as doctor,  I would estimate that the majority of time, my colleague is identified as the doctor and I the nurse. How much do my valid statements resonate when the patient is reoriented to me? Are they listening to me as a doctor, or as a female doctor? Why can't a just be the doctor, regardless of my gender? But what I see of the movement of "equality" is the tendency to want more than the other side. As though, because the pendulum has swung too far to one side, it is required to push past the middle and claw away something from the other side. But this is also not equality. So while the innocent child can say, "Anything you can do, I can do better", this is not what the disenfranchised can say to the other side. This is also why I hate to label the sides. We are all a complex mishmash of labels, but each one does not serve to unite us with others, but seems only to divide.

It is appalling what the colour of your skin can mean. I believe whole heartedly that black lives matter, and that atrocities are being committed everyday because of skin colour, and gender, and religion and orientation, and opinion. But if I am not black, I matter too. If I am not female, I matter too. If I don't adhere to your religion or way of thinking, I matter too. If I am not sexual, I matter too. If I disagree with you or you disagree with me, I matter too. But this doesn't help you understand me. And whatever your colour or gender or religious thoughts or orientation or opinions, you matter too.

I feel strongly that you and I are best served to meet simply as humans. It is natural that the next question you ask after meeing someone new, will result in a label. What do you do for a living? Where are you from? I get that we relate when we find commonality. But why can't it be that we relate over our concerns for our children, or the state of the world, or how we can respect each other and live at peace with each other. If we each did something positive for each other, we could take care of each other so easily.

Assassins lose count of their kills, if the spy novels are to be believed. Others lose count of how many people they have sex with. I have lost count of the number of people I have met dead, or dying, but every single one was a grief. Most people have no idea at how incredibly fragile our human body is. One stab to the flank. One high velocity car crash. One gunshot to the head. One cross walk ignored. One bike lane veered into. One irregular beat of the heart, and it's over. Human life is what we must protect. At all costs. It is precious, and precarious. We only get one opportunity. For all people, whatever label.

So if your label is on the wrong side of history, fight for equality. But don't take more from the other side, because that has never worked. Bring the pendulum back to the middle, but don't try and push it, to steal from the other side, or you just become a taker of equality from someone else.

My life, as privileged as it is to be living at this time in this beautiful free country, is never going to be equal to all. But that cannot be my focus, or I will take from someone else what is equality to them. I encourage you to see others as your equal, as human, with incredible potential, and a very brief lifespan. Be vigilant to the human fragility and wonder, and protect each other to your dying day.