We see a new way ahead...
Helen is one of the first women I met in London when I did my bachelor’s degree who showed me that being a woman (and a lecturer) doesn’t mean that we have to become caricatures of others’ expectations. I arrived in the UK, fresh-faced at 18 to start my first degree and the world was my oyster (and still is!) but I was full of anxiety for needing to become that adult who fulfilled everyone’s (well, everyone who mattered to me) expectations of who I should be.
Fast forward twenty odd years later, I find myself doom scrolling as I sit at my desk, slightly anxious from the amount of work I have to do, coming across a new song from Helen. Clicking and watching through the video, I am brought back to my early uni days, sitting in the Kodak Theatre at Westminster University’s Harrow campus, listening to Helen talk about music. It is nostalgic, it is fun, and most importantly, it is reassuring.
Dawn (my partner in crime) and I have been talking a lot recently about the craziness in our world at the moment, and Dawn constantly reassures me that it is all happening because change is coming. Change is near… perhaps change is here. Listening to Helen sing it so hopefully and calmly made me realise that I believe in it too.
I’ve been following Neil Gibb’s work on The Participation Revolution, which complements Henry Jenkins’s work on Convergence Culture that predicted a ‘Participatory Culture’ stemming from technological progress, and this unsettling murmur around us right now is brewing because we are at the threshold of a revolution. Right now, opinions sell—the more extreme, the better. People use social media platforms (as I’m doing here, writing this post) to say their piece, but the ones that attract the most attention are the ones that invite extreme responses. As it is said in media, if it gets five and one star reviews, it’ll be a bestseller. It banks on the fact that if people either love it or hate it, they will definitely talk about it. No one bothers with things that are just ok anymore. With this, I see so many who jump onto social media platforms with their extremely strong opinions, seeming to defend the weak and guide their followers with gusto, only to burn out, exclaiming that social media is a poisonous platform.
We’ve all heard and cowered from the line “If you say nothing, you’re complicit” because we don’t know anymore if we are or we aren’t [complicit]. Our own opinions cannot be trusted—we’re doomed if we speak and we’re doomed if we don’t. So, what can we do?
Do what we believe in and try not to let the tides of others’ sayings pull us under. Rather, push on ahead steadily, and whatever we do, be sure to do it from the heart, with kindness and compassion. The world is forever changing and we cannot stop that, but we can make it a loving place of change, at least.
I’m not the same girl that watched Helen in awe all those years ago. I’ve gained my own experiences and often find myself in the lecturer position now. I see the keenness of my 18-year old self in my students’ eyes and I want to be strong and certain in how I guide them. I want to give them what Helen gave me, that still resonates with me today. I don’t know if I’m succeeding, but I know that even though everything I do (everything that we do) might not feel enough, as long as we do our best, from our hearts, it will be.
