As I write it is the day before the funeral of Baroness Thatcher. For those not aware, Margaret Thatcher was the first (and, at time of going to press, only) female British Prime Minister. She served as Prime Minister for three terms and was a hugely divisive figure, loved and hated with equal fervour, more so than any other post war Prime Minister. Cue a flurry of activity. A state funeral has been organised, to the bewilderment of many. The cost is generally quoted at between £8m and £10m. She is the first PM since Churchill to have a state funeral. Big Ben (the famous bell in the tower of Palace of Westminster) will be silenced for the funereal procession. On the other side of the coin, people have organised street parties to celebrate the death of the woman they believe destroyed the country, protests and other less reverent activities are being organised to coincide with the funeral. For some people, actually, quite a lot of people, Mrs Thatcher provokes anger and hatred. So what's the right thing to do, and what does any of this have to do with caring?

The, very British, instinct is that the right thing to do is supress real emotions and show respect for the dead regardless of what you actually think. It probably says a great deal for the bile Mrs Thatcher has generated that notion has fallen by the wayside. But is this instinct correct anyway? I don't think so. 'Show respect' people say, but why should you show respect if you don't feel it? And why should we demand this of them? The reasonable argument, of course, is that when my mum dies I would rather there weren't people lining the route to the funeral. But then I'm not planning to have the nation pay for her funeral, close down half of London, silence Big Ben and invite heads of state from across the world to attend. Whether or not that was right is a different argument, my point is that by this stage, you are well past the point of asking for your privacy to be respected.

What all this has to do with caring may as yet seem unclear. Fear not. Hold on to your hair¹. The first thing to note is that we should not shrink away from what you might call 'negative emotions'. Fear, anger, rage and so forth aren't always the ideal emotional approach to a five year old's birthday party, but they are real and shouldn't be shoved aside and ignored. In much the same way as it would be counter-productive to pretend everyone loved Margaret Thatcher just because she's dead, it is wrong to have to room for articulating or expressing the things you feel in your own life. Around the time of mother's day I was involved in a discussion with some people who had suffered abuse at the hands of family members and felt at odds with the widely sold notion that you were supposed to love your mum. Some of them didn't, some of them hated their mothers. We can't afford to live in a world where hate and anger are 'bad' and 'wrong'. They are emotional responses, not conscious decisions. It is true to say we shouldn't let our emotions decide our actions, but equally true that we need to allow ourselves to feel what we feel, and sometimes we need license to let other people know what that is. With caring, there are massive emotional implications on both sides of the fence

And here is where the second notable point comes in. Since we can't bottle up our emotions or simply tell ourselves that they're bad and wrong, that only leaves us with expressing them. What that doesn't mean, necessarily, is letting someone know you are angry by yelling at them. Quite apart from anything else, a lot of the time if you talk through your anger, you will find that you aren't really angry because of the person you are angry at. You might be angry, for example, that they struggle with a nasty headache while you are in constant pain. They didn't cause the pain, and the headache is genuinely unpleasant to them. Maybe you feel angry that you are in constant pain, or that what to you is a minor pain can make other people seem so ill, or that they get to not be in constant pain and you don't. Whatever the case is, talk tell, communicate. Don't act your anger, explain it.

So here is the message for today: In the first place, don't let your negative feelings fester. They are real and legitimate and you need to find a safe way of expressing and articulating them. In the second place, if you profess to care for someone, one of the most important ways you can do that is by listening to them. You may not always like what they have to say. Like the feedback to a funeral, it may be negative, angry, shouty and resentful. But if these things are felt then they need to be heard, addressed and respected. Everything everyone feels matters, all of the time. Words can cause harm, spread malice, sew hatred but they are also the tools we have given ourselves to spread warmth, understanding and love. And to let people know that we care.

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benjaminpmoore

22.04.13 Front Page

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