Anniversary

Today would have been my 24th work anniversary as a public servant.  It’s one of the dates that has stuck in my mind.  I remember that there was a wet snowfall that morning, and I went to the office for the first time where I knew exactly 3 people in the city.  Life is very different now, in which I’ve made my home here and have a large circle of friends — plus an awesome medical team.  I’m a little tired today, no discernible rationale, and I’ll be heading in for an early night.  Jerry is in one of his moods, where he’s pretending to eat at me (he does this thing where he takes a mouthful of his dry food, walks over to me and chews it loudly, stares at me for a moment, then gets the next mouthful.)  Don had a much better night last night, and got a good sleep.  That’s a relief to me.

I’ve booked my first trip, where I’ll be heading out of town over Easter.  That took all of 10 minutes by phone, and the agent found me a 20% discount and discovered that I had another account with bonus points so they’re now merged and my travel points have increased by quite a lot.  She was super helpful and I sent off a quick “thank you” note to customer service for her help.  Saying thanks for good service is always a good thing, and companies really do appreciate it.  Or at least, they always reply with a note thanking me for recognizing good service and mentioning it.  It must be exhausting to always deal with customer complaints and try to calm down irate people.  On that note, I feel it necessary to point out that threatening, abusing or insulting the person on the phone is not the behaviour of an adult, and needs to be stopped.

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which was established because of the Sharpville massacre in South Africa in 1960, where 69 people were killed for protesting the apartheid passes.  The thing is, overt racism is easy to identify, like major evil, although it’s really horrifying that it can take hold and spread in a community.  In reality, though, evil — and racism — is often disguised and therefore more difficult to battle.  There’s a lot of discussion now about systemic racism, which is really difficult to spot and even harder to change.  It’s really a pity that this is such a divisive topic, and people dig in to their side, often attacking their opponents.  Add to that the experiences of people are very different, depending on where they fall.  If you’re a member of the majority race, you don’t see racism, because the world is arranged in a way that benefits you, whereas if you’re  not, you see a lot of barriers.  The challenge, for both sides, is to appreciate that the encounters are different without blaming the individual for the problem.  I’m not getting into much detail about this, there are several excellent books and hundreds of articles on how not to be racist, so I’ll leave it to you to read more if you want more information.  I do recommend the film Blue Eyes as a very practical example of systemic racism in practice.  It originated at the end of the 1960s (following MLK’s assassination) as a teaching tool for young children.  I also won’t discuss the racist comments and actions that I’ve received — mostly, thankfully, in my early years in Canada, none in the last few — which are sadly all too common among other people of colour.

As I’ve said before, I anticipate the day when these kinds of commemorations are no longer required.  It would mean that we, as humanity, have matured.  I’d love it if the things we celebrated were food related or days like Kindness Day or Happiness Day or Good News Day.  It would be great if we could have war, pestilence, famine, disaster, etc as dim and distant memories with no current meaning.  I’m going to leave my rose-coloured glasses on and imagine that kind of paradise.  It’s interesting that almost every creation story talks about the early time when there was no suffering; I think we should be trying to return to that state.  

I’ve got a dog who is demanding my attention, so I’d better get back to work!  Good night!