A Lifetime of Indifference.

Someone is brittle or broken and we say:

‘Let’s help them. Let’s gather around and let them know we care.’

We say:

‘Ring this number or go to this website and someone will help you.’

We say:

‘Let’s raise awareness of the brittle and broken and support them by wearing coloured socks to let them know they’re okay.’

Like there’s a lever or a button or a pill or a message or an intervention that we can pull or push or prescribe or send or implement that will somehow be powerful and persuasive and healing enough.

Where were we over the years before?

Where were our small and authentic and unsolicited acts of generosity and kindness and tough love and delayed gratification and patience and tenderness and the hundreds of other opportunities to be brittle and broken in view of this person so they could be fed and guided and a witness to how life is lived?

How patronising and condescending we are to think that a 1800 number can overcome a lifetime of our indifference.

Perhaps the final insult.