I began this post in the aftermath of the Brexit vote and, still in shock, it remained blank. I felt unable to muster even the tiniest of farts for that hurricane of reaction, and so I limited myself to sharing on social media the observations of those with far more eloquence. But as I’ve lain awake this morning, just over 24 hours after the news, and having worked my way a little further through the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – I began to think what it must have been like to have joined the EU in the first place.
One of the images I shared yesterday noted how the younger voters largely wished to stay, but the older voters wished to leave. The same graphic noted that the older voters would not have to live so long with their decision, and yet wasn’t it these same voters that took Britain into the EU, back in the 1970s, when it was ‘safer’ to remain as we had been?
Change is hard; even more so when you’re one of those people who don’t get what they want. The future is always uncertain, but even more so now, and my thoughts are with those more keenly affected than me: my British friends in Europe who are worried about being ejected from the country they call home, and on the flip side, my European friends in Britain. My fervent hope is that we find our way to remain as connected and to share with one another as much as I feel we need.
I’m still flipping back and forth between those stages of grief and I haven’t quite left anger behind. Part of me is angry with myself that I didn’t do more, but the vote results came as a shock to me. I’ve been thinking on why. One of the reasons for that might be because I surround myself with people who think like me. Social media reinforces that by using algorithms to feed me with news articles they think I will like, and so my deluded bubble is reinforced. Instead I should be connecting with more people who are not like me. To connect with people who live in another country and call it ‘done’ is just cheating if those people still have a similar level of education, are from a similar socio-economic group, and have the same value set, etc. Instead I need to listen to people who don’t like Europe and who fear immigration. In the U.S. I need to listen to people who love guns, who want to vote for Trump… because as long as I keep living in my secluded idealistic world, I’m not doing my bit to turn untied to united.
