This last 10 days have for me been amazing, suddenly, after a period of several months of acute relationship agony, life otherwise is improving tremendously. Now this blog as I hope you know is about all relationships as Finding the Relationship you Deserve (the book) is about all relationships in all of life. My relationship agony has not been with beloved Jim, but with another blood relative in my family. This relationship agony has been caused by other people’s mind boggling relationships with themselves and others. If you follow one of my other blogs NLP Highland Words that Change Minds, you may recall that my last but one blog was in respect of the World Cup if you read that blog and you just might find it interesting, you will be aware that I and the blog comment on relationships, how they have changed in South Africa since ‘I were a lass’.
Well if South Africa has moved on, blow me Britain has not. I’ve lived in Scotland since 1998, until this year I have NEVER experienced racism, intolerance or ignorance on a scale of which this year I am becoming aware of all of these three things. None of this is directed at me personally.
Ignorance is a state of being uninformed, so dictionaries say. Avoid confusing ignorance with being unintelligent, as a person's level of intelligence and level of education or general awareness are not the same. The word "ignorant" is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware.
My formative years were in the 50s and 60s in a sleepy suburb of Nottingham, I grew up with the Church of England and I remember one song, sung at the summer ‘camp’ (we never went away, the camps were held at the local church) events ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, be they yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight’ – it’s probably politically incorrect nowadays). Anyway, today I avoid churches if I can, but that’s another story, the comment is just here to state that what I write here is from a human point of view. In West Bridgford in the 50s and 60s I went to school with Polish, children, Russian children, German children, Ukrainian children, Indian children, Jamaican children and lots of white English children. I cannot recall one incident of racism, racial hatred (apart from my sewing teacher’s horror when I allowed a Jamaican girl to try, and I mean try to braid my very blonde, very straight and very soft hair (particularly in comparison with her hair, into Jamaican braids, she tried so hard and it just would not happen, we were fascinated with one another’s hair because it was so different!).
I learned so many things about how other people ate, what was ‘right and wrong’ in their families and I learned to form relationships with anyone ‘be they yellow, black or white’ and I learned different is ok. I also learned, cos some kids picked on me as I was ‘fatty’, that other people don’t like difference. Curiously what I did not know until about 2004 was that my Dad (bless his 87 year old cotton socks was racist – he now has 2 beautiful mixed race grandsons and 2 grandchildren who are also mixed race – that’s not obvious by looking at them by the way – and my Dad had at some point to change his mind about different people. My Dad grew up in a different age, with different rules and he did travel the world as a sailor, but then of course, other people stayed put, in their own countries).
Anyway this year I have come across indirect physical and verbal attacks on a 6 year old, cos he’s the wrong colour, so he’s different and that has almost cost me a family relationship and it has certainly changed that relationship, for reasons I will avoid discussing here.
Yesterday evening; we, me and Jim were sat outside the Golf View Hotel in Nairn, where in spite of some changes in ownership over the last few years, the food is still excellent. The Golf View has panoramic views of the Moray Firth, we watched a tanker, moored in the Firth, a cruise ship leaving from Invergordon and a small boot that had possibly left Nairn harbour, the sun was shining, the seabirds crying, quite a lovely day.
To my left sat a group of people in their 30s and 40s (one said he would be 44 this year, oh born in 1966, now that’s an interesting year – read on) they were mostly Scottish (from around Glasgow, Ayr and an English couple who I presume live in Scotland) they (the group) had some teenage looking children with and a spaniel and they were sitting and drinking and talking and they were quite loud.
Now do you know that scenario in life when something is in your field of awareness you home in on conversations, or you suddenly become aware of something and suddenly ‘it’s everywhere’? Well, bear in mind this is Saturday 3rd July and Germany (the football team that is) have just thrashed (nominalisation for played extremely well – I watched the match) Argentina that afternoon 4 nil and the German team played exceedingly, probably the best match in the whole of this year’s World Cup so far .
Anyway, suddenly yesterday evening outside the hotel, I overhear a young woman (late 30s) say ‘I think it’s disgusting, disgusting that when Germany were playing England people in the pub (somewhere in Scotland) where shouting for Germany to win’. This is interesting I think to myself, many Scots will want any team other than England to win, so I listened more closely and I then I held on tight to my chair …. She went on “do they not know we fought Germany in 2 world wars, it’s disgusting to want them to win when they are horrible people.” At this point in time on the other side of the glass to where she is sitting there are 2 German couples blissfully unaware as they enjoy, their good food, the Scottish hospitality, the great view, that there’s a Scot out there in 2010 with these views.
Now I maintained a good and useful state and did not let any of this ‘spoil my enjoyment, ruin my meal’, I refrained from ‘seeing red’, allowing ‘my ‘blood to boil’. I was amazed 2 months previously I sat in the Manchurian restaurant n Aberdeen and watched a woman, another Scot, on the mention by one of the men at the table that he had a German doctor, I watched her put 2 fingers above her top lip and give a Nazi salute sat at the table in the busy restaurant on a Sunday night (and she was sober).
I ask – is their relationship with themselves, so poor that they need to be racist that they need to ‘pick on others’ because they are different? Do they realise how world wars start? Do they realise that these 2 world wars were a long time ago? In Germany several years ago there was a poster something like this – do you realise? Your pizza is Italian, your kebab is Turkish………….. etc, Relationships are about tolerance, about recognising others are different, ok so I could say ‘it’s a free country she’s entitled to her opinion’ – those kind of opinions are the way in countries and people lose their freedom, how Mandela was incarcerated for years, why this World Cup is so important for world peace.
I’m sure I lost relatives in both world wars; I know my children will have lost relatives on both sides in both world wars. It’s 2010. Why still have a war in your head? Why do we need to bring baggage from the past (see page 30 of Finding the Relationship you Deserve) and what’s more it’s not even our baggage, into life today? My own mother wasn’t too happy about the Japanese as her brother had suffered in prisoner of war camps run by Japanese soldiers, she had a direct reason, she’s now grown older she’s more tolerant. We all have bad, destructive relationships at times; we all are at times in relationships in which we do things we later might think differently about. However the world will never be a pleasant place to live in if we persistently believe that because people are different from us, or were different from us that we should denigrate them, we should dislike, or hate them.
One of the NLP Operating Beliefs (Presuppositions about how it might be useful to think about life) states – Mind and Body are the same system – what affects one will affect the other – therefore if we think badly of others – guess what?
I enjoyed my evening and we went home and Jim watched Spain and Paraguay play and read a book, we enjoyed our relationship with one another and ourselves. And we like anyone, unless they directly do something to us or our families and then first we try and resolve the matter.
