I’m Coming Back…

“As you remove toxic people from your life, you free up space and emotional energy for positive, healthy relationships” – John Mark Green

I thought I was done and was packing up the keyboard.  I was just going to shut the site down, rearrange my life and keep my opinions to myself.  I was feeling increasingly like “white noise” and I thought it would be easier just to shut down.  Two months of biting my tongue has shown me it is to difficult to blindly accept the level of societal negativity going on around me and be quiet about it.  It is increasingly difficult to maintain a stiff upper lip while the chasm between right and left ideology continued to deepen.  I am not so sure now is the time to shut down.

I have reread my last article a number of times now and have had time to reflect on where that anger was coming from.  I don’t like anger if for no other reason than it fucks with my feng shui.  During this period of reflection I came to the realization that I owned some of the responsibility for this anger.  I had started personalizing issues and that traditionally leads to lost of control.

I usually pride myself on my ability not to personalize issues, comments or give up control of my emotions but I slipped.  It wasn’t any one event, it was information overload, too much negative news and complicated by social isolation.  And as a political junkie, it’s difficult not to be a little negative these days so it just seemed easier to shut her down.  When you don’t golf, hike, cycle or take long walks on the beach you don’t have a lot of venting space so shutting it all down seemed like the path of least resistance.

The last two month has been spend reflecting going through my year end activities.  Things like shredding old pay/staff records.  Seven years and this is the last year of records I have to shred.  Getting my own taxes done, working some policy issues through with the local health authority, trying to stay on top of access problems in my own town and the list goes on.  All of this has given me time to reflect on a wide variety of issues and things keep coming back to government policies.  It’s not that they are not there, it’s just that they are not policed.  We defend rights by speaking up for them, not adjusting them on the fly.

Reflection also gives you time to recharge and I did need that.  During this period of reflection I kept receiving my news alerts and they were screaming for a comment.  When someone can lecture a young lady who has been on crutches all of her life about the dangers of using stairs people have to speak out.  Up until the late 70’s persons with disabilities could be refused rent on anything above the second floor and I do not want to go back to those days.  The bigger issue here is why that particular night spot didn’t have an accessible bathroom… 

Why are able-bodied people still telling someone who uses a mobility aid how to live?  We have policies that are suppose to keep that from happening.  How can “aging-out” be an excuse to throw up even more barriers to access?  There are policies to protect against that.  I know that, I fought for them and helped write a number of them.  It is all well and good to have protective policies but when the government fails to enforce, silence is NOT golden…

We need to make our politicians accountable for the policies/regulations they create.  Just writing them, using them to get a good photo op and then put them in a cabinet to collect dust is no longer good enough.  Why should so many persons with disabilities have to take everything through a human rights process just to get something enforced.

I expect a certain level of ethical behaviour from my elected officials and ethics in politics is disappearing faster than the Antarctic Pine Island Glacier.  With a provincial election just months away the level of ethics in British Columbia politics borders on criminal.

With that in mind now is certainly not the time to go silent.  I’m back, I’m refreshed and I am more opinionated than the two old Muppet Men…

Just one man’s opinion…