Several evenings ago, I attended a “Welcome to the Neighborhood” gathering for new residents. This was a bit different than what one might expect. The particular couple being welcomed were educated, financially successful professionals with three children, forced to flee from one African country to another, only to find out that the second country was no safer than the first.
Upheaval of any kind can be traumatic. When coupled with mind-numbing fear, starvation, and the absense of any kind of support system, it can be paralyzing. Added to that litany was the wife’s being sent to the ICU for an illness that could have easily turned fatal.
I could write more about this couple, but what stays in my mind is that they focus not on their difficulties, but on the kindness of a soldier who gave them a small tin of sardines. They lived on that for two weeks. How they ultimately got to the US is the stuff of serials on Netflix, that we watch on our large screen TVs, armed with popcorn or blankets or pets or family.
The couple is safe now, or at least as safe as they can be while knowing their “tourist” visa is good for only 90 days. The clothing they have, the food they eat, the beds they sleep on, have all be provided by nameless people who have taken the time from their daily lives and the mind-numbing bombardment of tragic news around the planet, to help these people. As the wife said, “We only need two things in life. We need God and we need good people. When we came here, we had God, but we had no good people. Now we have God and we have good people.”
I’ve been with this couple twice, now. Their personal experiences are not the stuff of their conversations. Instead, they continue to be more focused on the world and on others than they are on their own personal challenges. Coming from places in which survival has been taken to its most raw moment, they are unfailingly focused out. To say they are “inspirational” is an understatement. That word does no justice to who they are and what they represent in the world. For now, they are simply amazed that they wake up each day and are still alive. Each morning they experience that feeling. It never diminishes. It most likely never will.
In one of the supreme disconnects of life, the day after I first met this couple, I read a piece about Trump’s speech at Hialeah Race Track in Florida, promising listeners the largest deportation of immigrants in American history. He attacked the “liars and leeches who have been sucking the blood out of this country.”
This post isn’t about Trump. It’s simply to say that this was yet one more graphic example for me that the way we view ourselves pretty much determines the way we view the world. Trump defined himself perfectly with his words that were meant to be about others. And the words of the couple I have written about are the result of who they define themselves to be. Theirs is the reality with which I choose to define myself.
Life in the Boomer Lane 
szpinner
November 13, 2023
Hey Boomer Lady,
A Canadian here…..I have admired and respected your country up until 2016…since then, my views have gone the other way. I ache for the turmoil your country is undergoing and lament the polarization and division it is experiencing. Such a great nation going to hell…but maybe that is the point, T**** is the devil personified. Could it be? Is it possible?
You nation was once the greatest in the world. Now it is becoming a laughing stock…all because of one man….that’s incredible.
I no longer vacation in the USA as I think the country is wacko…yet, I still lament for it as it once was the greatest nation in the world….today…not so much. I fear you are headed toward a civil war, saying it may not be a military one, is really lame as the use of guns, especially heavy duty stuff, is so prevalent there, you could have an armed civil war…….oh no … plz God….no !!!
Life in the Boomer Lane
November 14, 2023
I can’t even begin to express my sorrow and my outrage about what is happening now in this country. It is inconceivable. And the latest, with all of trump’s increasing Nazi rhetoric, keeps pushing it farther in that direction. I don’t believe Trump is the Devil. That would take an intelligence and a foresight that he doesn’t possess. But he is a man with no moral center, which allows him to say whatever he thinks will keep his minions in place. And, because he is incapable of understanding the consequences, his words will simply become more volatile and more dangerous. He’s a man who would set the world on fire, for no reason other than to give folks a good show.
Civil War? I don’t know. We are all of the edge now, emotionally. The 2024 criminal trial, the presidential campaigns and the election, itself, certainly have the ability to create a perfect storm of mayhem.
szpinner
November 14, 2023
An addendum comment from a “Canadian here…”
Hey Boomer Lady,
Thank you very much for acknowledging my comment. However, you dismiss my point of T**** being the Devil incarnate too lightly or too readily. Though I know it was not your intent, but you sound like the Germans of the 1930s who also were muted in what should have been moral outrage. Your country may have too many anti-T**** factions that sit too silently when they should be shouting with rage and indignation.
Once again, I admire and praise the pro democracy factions in your society but they seem to be the silent majority while the other side is amazingly vocal.
Civil war? Your nation is on the brink, as I said maybe not militarily, but edging to the precipice of becoming such. Gun rage and gun violence are close to being the norm in your country. How long before they become so?
I wish your nation well as your malady is spreading, across the democratic world and most certainly, edging over your northern border. We have our own little “T***ette” in a politican called Poilievre who is becoming more T****-like by day. Woe is us as we begin to copy the ‘great USA’ in our nation. Woe is the USA as it steadily sinks into self-destruction.
A final word, I still admire so many of your great leaders, politicians and people who speak out in defence of democracy and against the Satanic forces led by the Devil himself. Wonderfully, you’re one of the defenders too.
With all due respect…
Richard Szpin