Emergence v Emergency

Image credit: Kris Thomas

Many people in the international community are now waking up to the realization that Sri Lanka is experiencing an unprecedented phenomenon. And unfortunately, due to the media’s predilection for sensational news, the peaceful protests which began in the country two weeks ago are often being misrepresented in terms of violence, both in words and images. Incendiary phrases such as ‘police clash with protestors’ and images of individuals brandishing flaming torches evoke political uprisings of a physically violent kind, such as The French Revolution, or more recently - and to the shame of the U.S. - the failed attempt to ‘take over’ The White House on the part of the maudlin supporters of the outgoing 45th President. 

Perhaps the world at large can only understand protests in these violent and oppositional terms. Perhaps the consumers of television news are so jaded that they cannot believe that people can protest on just grounds for a better future without mayhem and property damage inevitably being involved. Most particularly, it is difficult for certain stereotypical mindsets to appreciate that the modern generation in their twenties and thirties can protest without self indulgence in the form of gratuitous violence, abuse of alcohol and drugs and promiscuity being their main focus. 

In Sri Lanka, the politically fuelled protests of the early 1970s and early and late 1980s are still alive in the memories of the older generation. Ethnic strife, cynically fomented by politicians with opportunistic agendas, has long been a successful ploy to keep the people disunited, and relatively easy to manipulate and coerce in predictable ways. 

This protest is altogether different in kind: it is apolitical, and although many political parties, companies and interested individuals are trying to ‘hijack the moment’ as observed by Roel Raymond, EIC of Roar Media, the protests have been clean and inclusive of diverse and pluralistic viewpoints, characterized by orderly conduct, community spirit and respect for the environment as well as respect for fellow participants. 

Sri Lanka has unfortunately often presented on the international stage in recent years in relation to natural and manmade tragedies and disasters: the decades long civil war, the tsunami of late 2004, the terrible Easter Attacks of three years ago. This regrettably  associates the country with negativity in global terms. In the present economic crisis, we are presenting as debtors on the international stage. 

But Sri Lanka has also long been associated with individuals of exceptional skill, dedication and talent, in many spheres of life, and it is the desire to create new context for the fulfillment of this positive potential that unifies all the protestors. The protestors are not exclusively young people: the mismanagement of the country has been ongoing on many levels for decades, and many citizens of all communities and generations have valid grievances, as clearly outlined in their statements on the hand made placards they carry. The protestors have created a space in which all voices can be heard. 

The ‘agitation site’ set out for public protest is growing in size. One of the most positive aspects of it is the focus on education: there is a dedicated library of resources available on site to inform all who wish to know about relevant political and economic issues pertaining to this crisis; and law students and economics students are conducting ‘Teach Outs’ which are public information sessions conducted via a public address system, to the crowds outside The Presidential Secretariat. 

It is important that the energy and vibrancy of the people power that is prompting this call for change is not distorted or wasted. Of all the sources of fuel currently available to us, the energy of the protestors is the most renewable. But it needs to be strongly supported and supplemented by the guidance of more experienced people who can amend the Constitution, and set in place the economic teams with the credibility and capacity to negotiate with the IMF and other international bodies, who require evidence of a stable political situation in the country in which they are asked to invest. 

A panel of 4 experienced public figures spoke about these issues yesterday, in a discussion facilitated by Hashtag Generation, discussing the economic, political and social challenges which the country must navigate in the immediate future. 

One of the questions asked of the panellists was about the need to select and appoint capable and qualified people for both public and private governance. The question was about education, and the panellists understood the phrase to refer only to formal educational qualifications. Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy and Dr. Asanga Welikala both said that imposing formal educational requirements on ministers would be seen as ‘elitist’, and cited examples of past successful and effective leaders of the country who had not attended university, and did not have formal degree qualifications. 

‘Why should the country be deprived of capable leaders because of an insistence that serving ministers have a PhD from Oxford?’ was a rhetorical question that was raised by the panellists. 

In fact, the question was more about the need for education of a less academic but more practical kind: training in basic economics, finance, history, civics and law and governance: knowledge which recent serving ministers in the grossly oversized governing body have clearly lacked. This kind of education would be a bridging course that could be mandatory for all serving ministers, to ensure that they are capable of fulfilling their roles in governance in an effective and responsible way. And the people would have greater faith in those who represented them. 

The past effective but academically unqualified leaders referred to had only basic schooling, but - crucially - they experienced this education in the public school system in a former era of the country, before the standards of the education system had fallen into the brokenness and stagnancy which presently characterizes it. 

The protestors in Colombo are now being criticized as ‘the elite’, being English educated and thus seen, inevitably in Sri Lanka, as ‘privileged’. But if they had not had the opportunity to study English via Cambridge or London courses at O level and A level they would not be able to communicate their views internationally or gain professional qualifications and skills at an internationally recognized level of competency. 

On a material level, they would not have been able to earn salaries in Euros or USD, which would benefit the country at this juncture. Many have chosen to live in the country, and to accuse them of elitism and of only developing empathy for the ‘hot struggles of the poor’ because they have been directly affected by power cuts for the first time, is an easy way to denigrate and ridicule their participation. 

But the very ease with which this privilege of education can be used to diminish the current protestors itself speaks to the vital need for better quality education being made widely accessible in the country. To focus on STEM subjects only is to devalue the critical thinking skills and capacity for structured logical thought that studying the humanities offers. The brilliant Sri Lankans of past renown had the benefit not only of free education but excellent and broad based education. 

Via English, an international link language, and through advanced computer literacy as a result of their age, the protestors emerging today so articulately have been able to see beyond the borders of the country to see how other countries organize their lives, and cater for the well-being of their citizens. They have been able to see beyond the external differences of race, religion and socio-economic class which have always been invoked to divide and disempower them in the past. And they have been able to act differently based on this more expansive and less defensive vision, to begin to create a different outcome. 

Emergency was resorted to by past generations. What we are seeing today is a different response to crisis: from a more educated and aware generation. We are seeing Emergence. The emergence of a citizenry who have a sense not of spurious entitlement based on past glories, but of worth and dignity based on present capacity, and the desire to create structures of governance in which their potential can be fulfilled, not only to adorn their resumes but to benefit the country as a whole.

Indulgences

Hundreds of years ago, the Catholic Church had a system called buying ‘Indulgences’ - by which people who were planning on breaking a moral code or committing a sin could pay a member of the clergy to forgive them. This system was convenient for those with more money than others. It was also corrupt, on many levels. I suspect, for example, that the most highly organized could pay to be forgiven in advance, much as we today pre-pay the data plans on our mobile phones.

In recent weeks, as powercuts across the country increase, and food and fuel prices sharply rise, I have been thinking of other kinds of indulgences. How long can we continue to access the things we like, which are not at all necessary to life, but which add so much pleasure to it?

Online luxury delicatessens abound in Colombo - you can order manna from Heaven, in the form of French cheeses, Norwegian smoked salmon, Australian breakfast cereals, Italian cooked ham, and Swiss and Belgian chocolate, direct delivered to your home. If you can afford them, now the local currency has depreciated so much.

But items such as these are called ‘perishables’ for a reason. And many of them need to be refrigerated after they are opened and consumed within a certain period after opening. With the powercuts in areas of Colombo now being extended to 10 hours a day, stocking up on these items could mean a great deal of unfortunate wastage.

If your residence is fortunately located in an area which has enjoyed generally uninterrupted electrical supply, you are truly blessed. If not, you could consider investing in ‘3 in 1’ cooking equipment which enables you to cook multiple items simultaneously, so you can prepare your household’s meals rapidly in the increasingly short period of time between power cuts. And of course, food cooked fresh every day needs to be consumed the same day, to prevent it getting spoiled in the fridge or freezer. Also do consider using vacuum flasks to store boiled water so you can make tea and coffee between power cut periods.

We are learning spiritual lessons from this situation. We are learning that inequity is being encouraged, justified and - possibly - utilized and weaponised. People are being taught to be grateful for their most basic needs being met, and gradually in the months ahead we will forget about the life we previously enjoyed. Our expectations are being modified.

A full gas cylinder is a cause for celebration. Diesel fuel or enough petrol to run a generator is a matter for rejoicing. This is survival mode, and the idea of thriving is increasingly becoming a diminishing dream, and a fading memory.

While some people are standing for hours in queues for fuel and kerosene and litro gas, fainting from heat exhaustion, others are paying 15,000 LKR per head to attend splashy launches and glittering social events, in air conditioned venues bedazzled with fairy lights, telling themselves (and each other) that they are promoting local industry, stimulating enterprise and encouraging investment.

It’s high time we rename the resplendent land: it no longer even resembles a socialist democratic republic. It is a feudal society, and people are becoming normalized to that, and the hierarchies implicit in such a construct. Common ground is being eroded. We have returned to the time of indulgences.

Colombo is becoming a city like The Capitol in The Hunger Games. This has been a lengthy dimming of human capacity. For a long time, it seems that the country has been going in a direction of discouraging education, particularly critical thinking, so that a few members of the ruling elite can manipulate the citizenry the way they want. No accountability. No capacity to question. No respect. This benefits a visible few, but it is a terrible short selling of overall human potential.

What kind of brazen insouciance - what F. Scott Fitzgerald called ‘vast carelessness’ - enables people to ride past the fuel queues to their glittering venues of choice, order Creme de Brie with Italian crackers, and stack their walls with iconic paintings from the ‘43 Group while the country as a whole suffers?

Obviously all that is needed is a lack of empathy, and no sense of common humanity. Vanity, self aggrandizement and entitlement vie with each other for prominence in the character of such people. Even virtue signalling is not bothered with, anymore, or performative philanthropy. The optics don’t matter, because supremely entitled people really don’t care who is looking. Incurring public criticism on social media is the only tax they pay for the level of privilege they enjoy on the daily.

Is it a vicious game, like that played in domestic residences where narcissists drain their victimized spouses, daring them to stand up one day to the prolonged abuse to which they are daily subjected? How can people stand up for themselves, and their rights, when their spines are broken?

Divide and conquer is a basic and successful strategy, which has been implemented by generations of leaders in countries all over the world. Divide and estrange the people from each other, and they will be easy to stir up into predictable factions. Conquer them by exhausting them: depleting their resources, restricting their access to daily necessities, devaluing their economic resources - and eventually their will to fight for their eroding rights will also weaken.

We are being trained to live from day to day. Forgetting the past, and not being able to envision the future. Short term thinking is characteristic of cave men and criminals. Strangely, the Californian gurus who encourage us to ‘live in the moment’ may be our true guiding light in these darkened days.

The plus side is of course that if we adjust to a simpler existence, sans Brie, sans pannacotta, sans Parma ham, we will become healthier. We will start to appreciate the simpler things in life, purely because all the complex and sophisticated things have been removed from our ability to access them. Like the most primitive ancestors of the human race, we will just be glad to be alive.

Let There Be Light 💡

It is difficult to know how to properly manage our resources, these days. It’s hard to see clearly, in the gathering dark. And the air is filled with smoke from wood fires, as it was in the days of our ancestors.

It’s hard to fact check, with the rush and swirl of incoming and often contradictory information and bulletins and opinions. But earlier today I thought I saw flickering on my intermittent screen display a piece of incomprehensible news: it is proposed that the country save electricity by switching off the street lights that illuminate the streets on which our citizens walk.

I have attempted to digest a lot of hard to chew data lately, with pandemic statistics and beauty queen dramas and the ill timed opening of pleasure domes, the creative redistribution of portfolios and accounts and accountabilities - but this really takes the last piece of love cake.

I will check this fact, but it seems to me that the installation of street lights in urbanized areas was one of the great benefits of industrialization. Citizens could feel safe and protected, as they went about their business, returning from work and essential grocery shopping after dark. This was particularly so for women, always more vulnerable to predators, thugs, and other lawless elements of society.

Sri Lanka is noticeably nineteenth century in many ways, particularly where its legal processes and social mores are concerned, but this removal even temporarily of the citizens’ right to illumination and safe conduct after dark in their own streets sets us back into an era before the harnessing of electricity.

In a socialist democracy, the citizens surely have a right to expect safety and protection, and they are entitled to consider that their elected rulers should place their welfare in a position of priority. How can we see what is happening, in our streets, lanes, suburbs and precincts, when there is no light? How can CCTV cameras show any footage without street lights to reveal the identity of robbers and thieves, who attempt to scale the perimeter walls?

It seems as if those rights - far from being inalienable - have been cumulatively eroded; and ideals which were considered foundational structures of the country have been whiteanted away over time, leaving only a facade which can easily be overturned by a breath of ill wind.

What a colossal waste.

What a crying shame.

That a once resplendent land, which its citizens were proud to inhabit, is currently so shadowed that our future path, let alone our progress, is impossible to foresee.

Birds Of Paradise

Being a woman in Sri Lanka in 2022 is a challenging experience. Gender in a patriarchal society whose hetero normative values are entrenched is intensely complicated by the complex fragility of South Asian men, in a triple colonized country. I suggest that the extreme and multi-faceted misogyny experienced by girls and women in Sri Lankan society has at its core the compulsive need that colonised men have to subjugate the women they claim to desire, love and need, but in fact frequently seek to control and dominate.

Young women in Sri Lanka experience harassment and interference on many levels: from body shaming in their teens and twenties, to workplace harassment, to gender discrimination in the employment and workplacement process, to inequitable maternity arrangements, to catcalling and street harassment to and from the workplace on public transport, and to domestic violence and intimate partner violence in the home. If they seek relief from a toxic domestic environment via divorce, they are often terrorized, shamed or targeted by their ex, who cannot tolerate what he perceives as any kind of rejection. Their professional reputations are often the target of sustained defamatory abuse.

One day a year, highflying women in Sri Lanka are recognised for their inspiring achievements - usually women who are in the public eye or in the corporate world. The rest of the year sees the rest of the female citizenry of the country effectively erased, marginalized, dismissed and downtrodden.

This state of things, like many debilitating factors which degrade the society in which we live and work, has become normalized, to the extent of many women also internalizing misogynistic values, and participating in harassment and bullying of other women online and in the workplace, instead of supporting or encouraging them to stand their ground.

Diminishing of the status of women is a loss to the whole society, and categorizing this as a minority issue is a misrepresentation. It is not only statistically untrue to call women a minority group, but a failure to recognise their contribution, their capacities, their dignity and their worth.

So many men in Sri Lanka have abused their positions as leaders, by harassing and intimidating their female staff members and colleagues, unrealistically expecting respect in exchange for the profound disrespect they themselves offer. The #MeToo movement in this country has not exposed any major players, and it is easy to see why. Women are systemically outgunned, and outnumbered in public office. It is too easy to dismiss their opinions as overwrought, emotional or hysterical.

Yet anger is an emotion: and one of the most destructive of all. And it is often shown by male bosses, fathers, husbands, boyfriends, brothers and other authority figures, specifically to frighten and enforce the compliance of those whom they perceive to be lesser than them in status, and who need to be ‘shown their place’. Anger management is something that violent people need to learn, because a person who cannot control themselves and their frustrations should not have authority or influence over others.

Members of the younger generation of activists are speaking up, now, and openly calling for gender parity on panels and boards (via such initiatives as #balancethepanel) and critiquing the messages disseminated by sexist and belittling advertising in mainstream media. Predatory behaviour of all kinds is being called out, via social media. Unprofessional conduct in many professional arenas is no longer always escaping the blind eye that has traditionally been turned towards such behaviour.

Any non-normative venture in Sri Lanka which seeks to expand the visibility of women and expand the definitions of what a woman is, faces compulsive trolling, knee jerk mansplaining, ridicule, outrage and misunderstanding. The need to keep girls and women in their designated ineffectual ‘place’ is obviously very much part of the cultural identity of the people in Sri Lankan society. Toxic rather than divine masculinity has dominated the discourse for decades.

Gender violence in contemporary Sri Lanka should be seen as part of the violence inherent in the fractured society as a whole. People who perceive themselves to be second class citizens in a hierarchy imposed on them unjustly, have very little capacity for empathy towards those even more vulnerable in real terms than they themselves feel they are.

The weight of oppression: a fusion of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and caste, can paralyze a person who is confined by these suffocating categorizations. The silencing of people who have the capacity to question and challenge the conformity which keeps us less than we could be as a society is both a vicious trend and a red flag. And the description of a country where this routinely occurs as a ‘Paradise’ is now unfortunately ironic, where people are concerned. The landscape is still idyllic, but the people are being subjected to outmoded inequities and indignities.

A new generation of leadership is currently being trained, with an eye to the future. A key aspect of that training is knowledge of diversity, inclusiveness, gender respect and ethical behaviour. In the meantime, it is a daily ordeal for many of our citizens, who in addition to lacking power in terms of petrol, litro gas, and diesel fuel, lack power in more intrinsically relational and personal ways, as a result of their gender status.

The good thing is, that unlike fossil fuels, the powers of self belief, self awareness and self worth are always renewable, and are not dependent on external sources or authorities. Caged birds have the capacity to fly, as well as sing.

Parasitology

We live in a tropical country, and it is a fertile environment for parasites. The landscape around us could be said to be pulsating with these repellant creatures, locking horns with each other and compulsively latching onto targeted hosts and leeching energy, nutrients and vitality for their own survival from them.

We see parasites in the plant and animal world, visibly hanging off the bigger and healthier entity on which they are feeding. Invisible to the human eye, parasites which cause disease propagate in air, water, and within our human systems.

This week, I witnessed some remarkable occurrences of parasitism in the online sphere.

We are all familiar these days with the phrase ‘content creation’. And creation of fresh, original, relevant content both verbal and visual is what drives the growth of online platforms on Facebook and Instagram.

Social media strategists suggest that when an organisation starts to build its platform, and stake its place in the online sphere, it should create interesting posts using compelling and attractive visuals, and utilize catchy hashtags, to attract reader traffic. These words and images should be posted regularly, and even digitally scheduled, to ensure continuous growth and recognition of the relevant page.

It’s often exciting when we begin to use online tools and start to become more adept in using them, learning to connect interactively to our target audience, and build and grow our brand, whether we are a lone blogger or a community organisation.

Successful online organizations will tell you that it takes time and effort, trial and error, and quite a long period of diligent experimenting before they start to see results in terms of growth of audience engagement measurable in increased numbers of likes, follows and emojis.

A quick and lazy way to cut through this effortful process is for a person to create a whole blog or an entire YouTube channel dedicated to ‘critiquing’ one particular Netflix show or the website or publications of a particular company or organisation. They grow their audience from the disaffected or curious viewers of the original broadcast. The phenomenon of false equivalence created by the internet means a blogger with 5 followers can swell fat by trashing a programme with 5 million followers.

The ‘critiques’ are often thinly disguised attacks, sometimes on specific individuals, and the elasticity of freedom of speech seems to cover a lot of ground in terms of what can be said on public platforms. The parasitic bloggers and commenters flourish and profit in the short term by deriving their own material directly from the original content first broadcast by their host.

We see this happening with the new season of ‘Sex And The City’, for example. A person wholly unknown to me is videotaping herself each week, commenting step by step and scene by scene on everything she hates about the new season of the phenomenally successful TV show, the recent iteration of which is titled ‘And Just Like That’.

‘Sex And The City’ was viewed as the ‘It’ Show of its time, when the leading ladies were young and perceived as physically attractive. Now, those sweet young things are nearly 60, and a lot of the criticism of them is centered on how much - and how gracelessly and awkwardly - they have aged, and how much the writers have strayed from the vibrant premises of the original show, with its focus on female friendship and sexual pleasure.

The unknown YouTuber is feeding off the prevalent negativity in a repellant way, enriching herself through the direct correlation and conflation of the content. It’s a form of mimesis, and also a form of stalking. At its most sinister, it’s a form of silencing. If a person had mud thrown at them every day when they left their home, they would possibly one day wake up and decide not to go out of their own front door. Whose freedom of expression is being affected adversely, now?

Today, we know more about how the human mind works, and marketers and social media strategists are aware that sensationalist headlines, clickbait and controversial material are big draw cards, particularly for a viewing audience who have suffered enforced stasis - courtesy of the pandemic - for two and a half years.

It’s a rapid surge of adrenaline, seratonin and dopamine to see the kind of contemporary bear baiting that is created by online contestation of this kind. ‘What has happened now? What scene did the YouTuber attack this time? Who got knifed in today’s episode?’

It can be (and is, often) argued that any publicity is good publicity, but I think that is a crude truism.

Parasitic content ‘creators’ have a ready made excuse: ‘The original organisation is so defensive, and easily offended. They should buckle up and be prepared to face public opinion, if their organisation wants public acclaim and recognition’.

It’s the ‘They are so sensitive!’ denial of wrongdoing justification we are all so familiar with, when some posturing renegade wants to avoid accountability for their cheap tricks and substandard conduct.

But the rapid hormonal spikes and fabricated controversies generated by parasitic content creators do not last long. The very same short attention span and low boredom thresholds that initially create interest on the part of viewers in this low grade infotainment are also their undoing.

True to their parasitic nature, they drop off, dry up and wither, while the original material maintains its substantial and often classic status over a far longer term.

Cue the Circle Of Life!

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

One of the greatest benefits of the past two years of pandemic related disruption has been the opportunity to shake up our lives: professionally, and personally. To decide who and what adds value, and who and what diminishes our energy and sense of worth.

As our lives recalibrate, and we reconnect with people we first knew decades ago, we realise that we have all gone through some difficult years. Some people are difficult to recognize at first, physically. There have been divorces, financial stress, disasters, bereavements, addictions to alcohol and other substances, betrayals and unfortunate involvements with narcissists. They all take a toll, on our optimism and our positive momentum.

Because so many of our sources of security have been profoundly disrupted in the past two years, we naturally wish some things to stay the same. Old friendships from our late teens and twenties are among these sources of reference. Often they seem to involve a complex karmic connection of some sort, and - looked at in that way - they have definitely brought with them some illumination which has been unique, in our formative years.

When we are just starting out, we are young and energetic, but also quite anxious: worried about the choices we make in haste, and whether what looks good on the surface will actually make us happy. As we get older, getting wiser is not actually a given - unless we have made the effort to confront a great deal of the truths we all must face at some stage in our lives, and have benefitted from the fruits of that sustained effort.

If we ride the shock waves of change, we may find our current lives to be unrecognizable in comparison to the one we inhabited in the past. And our choices are far better: both personal and professional life choices, and our choices of friends. Our history matters, because it has shaped us.

As we become less superficial, we don’t judge everyone by external values or in hierarchical terms - inferiority or superiority - by their appearances, or by worldly or material standards. We assess their energy. And even people who have suffered continually in their lives, but have refrained from involving us in their sufferings, or blaming us for them, remain part of our friendship group.

If we want to inhabit a world which perpetuates a narrative of dead-end negativity centered on outmoded perceptions, those choices are now shown to be unsustainable. As the dead wood disintegrates, vivid new life is given space to flourish.

People do learn, and grow. That has been my lived experience. And the truth is that some people prefer not to grow, and prefer that the people they want to dislike, for whatever reason, conscious, or unconscious, do not. That the people they stereotype and label - often unjustly and inaccurately - remain stuck or unhappy or troubled or ‘problematic’ or ‘difficult’ forever.

When we were younger, our capacity to absorb other people’s chaos that was higher. Now we find that we need to keep that to a minimum. Especially living in these chaotic times, and in a country with no safety nets, or buffers at all, we may find our emotional band width has diminished.

Some people attract and perpetuate drama. And while it was interesting in our twenties, and an opportunity to develop compassion and empathy, it has become a spectator sport in later life, as we extricate ourselves from the inner circles of those draining, attention-getting members of our social circles. They caused discomfort, by always going through something intense, which meant the conversations they engaged in were one-sided, and their friends didn’t feel heard. Looking back, the perpetual drama we were subjected to seems like a sort of narcissism, and we realize we felt - without admitting it directly - that the friendship had become an ordeal. A lot of the interactions were heavy, and were about processing big issues.

Sometimes unhappy and chaotic people want what their friends are having, are offended or irritated by their friends’ happiness, and so compulsively downgrade the joy or success their friends seem to have discovered.

As we increasingly value ourselves, we become selective, and discerning: we align ourselves with less troubled people, and people who do not wish us well. It’s not that some people are free of suffering, but that they have grown and learned how to be able to handle our own griefs and stresses, and manage them more effectively. As we do an honest audit of our lives, we confront the fact that we may be ashamed of some of the choices we have made. I think understanding our choices and accepting ourselves leads to self compassion and forgiveness, that leads to our lives becoming clearer and the burden of the past lighter.

The joy of growing is that you find people who respect the very qualities which you yourself possess. They do in fact exist! And understanding, respect, and inter-assurance of the mind do exist, good communication and empathy do exist, and mirrors can be held up lovingly by people who trust and care about each other, and genuinely wish each other well.

We can find ourselves refreshed: completely glad to be alive, and to be walking on a path we find meaningful and joyous, productive and fulfilling.

If this is the case, we want people in our life who feel the same way, about themselves and about us, whatever backgrounds they come from, or whatever lives they are living. They may be troubled by their own issues in their life, and be struggling in all kinds of ways. But they see us as an ally, and a companion in the adventure of their life. We do not burden each other.

So now, as the houses all over the world have so recently been cleaned for the first auspicious New Moon of the year, and salt and blessings have been scattered over the thresholds to protect all those who go in and out of these households, we can really say goodbye - not only to the old year, but to all the old years before, and all the tired old connections that grew in them, and whose cycles of life and relevance have now ceased.

We can wholeheartedly wish each other Happy New Year, because the seeds of our current happiness were planted by our own good decisions in the previous year. We do not have to predict or foretell the future in mystical ways. We can make choices today which create it.

Appreciation For Natalie Soysa - Accessing All Areas

‘Honesty is reached by the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, our world, or our self.’
⁃ David Whyte

Natalie Soysa’s talents and skills were many: she had great personal creative gifts, and also a tremendous generosity in seeing and encouraging the creative visions and contributions of others, in creative writing, acting, music, activism, journalism and every form of human expression.

But her superpower, in my opinion, which fuelled her most powerful transformative impact in the areas in which she worked, and connected with people, was her honesty. She was honest with herself and her life, with insights rare in such a young person; and she was uncompromisingly honest in her challenging perspectives on society and its injustices and inequities.

She had the grace to always make the effort to express her ideas in positive ways, and the courage and strength to constructively use her anger, disappointment, grief and outrage at the way positive ventures have often been shortchanged and eroded by mainstream unconcern, ignorance and complacency.

She was a person who recognised excellence, and the purity and energy of a passionate engagement with life, and was dedicated to the achievement of both in creative expression. To do this, she lived with an awareness few in a conservative or hidebound society understand or attain themselves.

Natalie’s work is known by diverse groups of people with whom she collaborated in many projects. It is now, after her passing that we all can commemorate her, and see the range of issues and platforms across which she has been working.

Her commitment to the broadening and deepening of social understanding and awareness was shown in the way she worked to open community discussion about beliefs and ideas which are so seldom openly discussed or even admitted. These include the need for the protection of the rights and dignities of vulnerable groups; the need to re-evaluate mindsets which prevent the full participation of diverse citizens in the development of the country; the need to challenge outmoded and damaging beliefs; and the need to not just tolerate but inform ourselves about those who are different from us, without judgment, dismissal and defensiveness, to engage with them, and respect them.

She made the world of ideas, words and visual creativity in Sri Lanka not only a better place, but a bigger and more inclusive place: by challenging the cliquishness, snobbery, self-righteousness, hypocrisy and fame seeking of many operating in the performing arts worlds, particularly at the intersections of creativity and marketing.

Her openness of mind and heart led to an ongoing opening of creative doors and pathways for others, and her work will be respected and remembered by her colleagues in many forms, and inspire the younger generations of creatives who are just starting their own journeys.

We were greatly fortunate to have had Natalie Soysa living and working in our country during her unjustly short life. She did more, and more effectively, in that life, than many do in a far longer span. And we are so thankful for it.

Shhh! Episode - Rebel Women