Fear not the path of righteousness for the lack of people walking on it

On behalf of the Gaza people and the cognoscenti of global health I would like to express gratitude to Lesley Pocock for her contributions. Lesley, you are touching more souls through your writings than you realize. These poignant, meaningful and thought provoking articles throw knives right into the heart of truth. Courageously she has decided to take a stand for the innocent people and our planet. Most of us feel that we can’t stand up and say much lest we become marked as trouble makers and outsiders, after all we need our paychecks to survive in the dreary grind of daily living and the evaporated future and squandered life. Some are too busy paying mortgages; others try to make sure the kids get to school on time and try to get them to eat some breakfast before they go. In the last two articles published in the Middle East Journal of Family Medicine she shatters the silence surrounding crucial issues by choosing to travel through the inner recesses of Tyrone’s psyche. Rather than pontification from a distance about the war crimes in Gaza, she pulls the trigger and shoots the targets. She reminds me of the tree stump in Shel Silverstein’s children’s story by giving a sip of humanity to the world when it is most parched! No wonder she lives in a place that used to be the home of lions with a body trained to endure severe tropical cyclone Savannah. I envision the strength of her hands and her tool (pen) like claws that could hold down any threat until it surrendered!. Her recent two articles are an eloquent appeal to a world on the edge of civilization Suicide.!!! This J’accuse she hurls in the face of tyranny and tyrants who sway public opinions and change behavior. She believes that Gods/Universe desire to keep the stuff of life hidden from us. There is no instruction book for human progress and despite the accumulation of human knowledge the application of our talent never results in linear advance. She calls it mortal predicament. Her world revolves around it. She understands the cruelty of men as an evil that metastasized in the planet. It is so easy to get overwhelmed and have decision paralysis by living in a world where capitalist democracies have become mere facade democracies and populism as the symptom of democratic failure. I am someone who is unusually prone to despair. Maybe I have been fighting this for a long time. Part of the reason we feel despair is because we do not see long term change when we are looking at crisis after crisis after crisis. She continues to grapple with these questions. Would life on earth be just fine without us? What is the biggest blind spot we have that the future generations will look back on and think “What were they doing?” When I ponder my life and the world I feel optimistic because I see more people like her with unexpected acts of generosity that restore one’s faith in humanity. People like her that provide us at least a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Yet others disappoint us terribly. Both of these things are true at the same time and holding these competing concepts together is really exhausting but it is also essential. Finally I quote: The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.