Children at a Pop Concert

First published on May 25, 2017

I watched a video last night, touching and heartwarming, of a Scottish man, a Manchester resident, talking to BBC Newsnight about what is happening in the city at the moment. He had been offering to give blood, and his plan for what to do next was to walk around Manchester smiling at people. 

Yesterday afternoon, before I watched the video, I walked past a man in the street in London. He was walking along smiling to himself. I couldn't help but smile, too. Smiles are contagious. I sometimes find myself walking around town, smiling to myself, and I wonder how many smiles are passed on. My girlfriend, Emma, once walked from the station to our flat and - because she was smiling, because of something about her that day - she interacted with five strangers in a 13 minute walk. Not normal London fare.

Smiles are contagious, connection is contagious. 

But I haven't felt like smiling much this week. I've felt angry, and I've felt sad. Little girls. Mums and daughters. That was their target this week. Deliberately setting out to kill as many as possible. 

I don't know what to do with these feelings. The anger, in particular. I've never been very good at dealing with it, and I don't particularly have an outlet. A place to be angry, safely. Mostly anger is not encouraged. It can be frightening. But our emotions are our bodies' way of getting rid of waste. And it's not good to keep them in. 

In my head this week, I've looked for where to go. I want to be an optimist, I want to be in a place of possibility. 

I came back to one of my values, one of my rules. Live from a place that everyone is doing their best. Recently when I've talked about that people have said, 'What? Even Donald Trump?', but Donald pales into insignificance next to the kind of people who would conspire to blow up children at a pop concert. 

When people ask Brené Brown about this, because this is a principle from her book, Rising Strong, she talks about boundaries. She gives the example of a friend who drinks heavily. So heavily that parties are spoilt, people can't have fun, and Brené is left feeling upset and hurt by her friend's repeated behaviour. In the end, she says, you have to put up boundaries. You might have to say 'I know things are hard for you. I know there are really good reasons you feel like it is important to numb your pain with all this wine. But you are hurting me, you are hurting my friends, so until you have this under control, I can't have you at parties. If I can help you in some way, please let me know.' To do that from a place of I believe you are doing your best takes you out of judgment and into love and possibility. 

But what are the boundaries for these people? Even assuming they are doing their best, being seduced by religious darkness to murder children. Even assuming that if I had been there, then, it could have been me, doing my best by blowing up children at a pop concert. Even assuming that, where do we draw the line? What are the boundaries? Because this isn't working.