My thoughts and prayers should not be the focus of your anger right now.

Another day in America, another school shooting  A little over a week ago, Nikolas Cruz (a troubled former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida), opened fire in the school, killing 17 people and wounding many others. We’re shocked and horrified – again. We’re holding our children just a little tighter – again. We’re angry that such violence is allowed to exist in our world – again. Families are still burying their dead, and Americans are searching for answers and solutions – again. We Canadians are peeking through our blinds at our neighbour’s latest domestic disturbance, feeling both sorry for, and superior to, them. Social media is awash with sorrow and outrage on behalf of the families terrorized by the daily possibility of a school shooting. And rightly so: there were 65 of them in the US last year. They’re on track to beat their own record this year – it’s only February, and there have already been nearly 20 occurrences of a live round being discharged in a school building or on a school campus. Another common theme – at least, in my newsfeed, anyway – is smugness. We’ve got gun control, so we don’t have school shootings. Yay, Canada! Again, rightly so: I worry about lots of things when I kiss my kids goodbye in the morning, but a school shootings – nearly non-existent in Canada – are very low on the list.

Over the past few months, I’ve been seeing another theme emerge: screw your thoughts and prayers, you useless hypocrite, and do something.

 

In my opinion, memes like these are judgmental, patronizing, insulting and presumptuous. How do you know that the person who’s praying isn’t doing anything about the problem? You don’t. You just assume. How dare you judge someone else’s sincerity or try to censor their reaction to what is happening, just because their response is not like yours? How arrogant of you to decide that a person is lazily ignoring all possible solutions in favour of prayer and meditation, when all you actually know about the person is that he or she shared a thoughts-and-prayers meme.

Even worse, people share memes like this one, which implies that people who pray are worse than useless – they’re using their prayers to feel like they’re doing something productive so they won’t feel guilty about not doing something:

Again with the presumption, judgement and insult.

Clearly, if you are sharing memes like the examples above, you don’t believe in praying. You believe that it has no value – and, indeed, no place in the life of any intelligent human being. However, there are millions of people who do not feel that way – myself included. I have known, all my life, that I am surrounded by prayer. My grandparents prayed for me faithfully. So did my father. So does my mother, and my mother-in-law, my husband and my children. So do some of my friends. Does it change things in my life? Maybe – but, again, you don’t believe it. So I guess that’s my personal leap of faith … Does it make me feel better about pretty much everything? Yes. No matter what comes my way, no matter how low I feel, knowing that someone is praying for me – loves me enough to hit their knees on my behalf, and wish me the best – is like receiving a strong hug from invisible arms.

When a child falls and hurts themselves, one of the first things most people do is hug them and speak gently to them. It won’t mop the blood from their knees or heal their bruises, but it will be comforting. It will show the little one they’re not alone, and that someone is watching and cares. When a friend comes out with bad news, most of us will hold that friend and tell them we are there for them. We can’t lift them out of debt, fix the struggles of their children, or bring a dead spouse or parent back to life. But they will draw strength from the warmth of our touch, the emotional caress of our concern. They will know someone sees their pain and gives a damn.

Imagine, now, that it suddenly became trendy to mock that response.

“Hey, you – it’s adorable that you can give hugs instead of making actual change.”

“Oh, look, you kissed her boo-boo! Now it’s going to magically disappear … Or not. Because science.”

“Hug away, selfish asshole. At least now you won’t have to actually help somebody, because you’ve made yourself feel like you already have.”

“Oh, sure, listen to her whine, then tell her you’re there for her. ‘Cause that will totally cure your friend’s cancer.”

Most people wouldn’t do that. That would be insensitive, crass and just plain mean. But so many seem to have no qualms about trampling on heartfelt wishes and bone-deep beliefs, offered by people who are just trying to get through life with a little grace and kindness. I have no control over American politics. I can’t raise shooting victims from the dead and give them back to their family. I can’t banish the nightmares of the survivors. My earnest desire that things will get better, my terribly inadequate shreds of sympathy, my prayers – are sometimes all I have to give. And, frankly, if they never do an ounce of good, at least they’re positive and unifying. That’s alot more than can be said for mean-spirited memes.

Something’s gotta give …. why not let it?

By now, we’ve all heard about Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau’s plea to the Canadian public for more help. She receives so many requests for appearances and speeches – and, one imagines, the mere pleasure of her company – that she feels overwhelmed. She describes having to choose between causes and events because she can’t support all of them – in her words, she “can’t be everywhere”, being the wife of the prime minister and the mother of three young children. Her dining room table has become like an office, she says, and she needs an assistant to help her handle it all.

Reactions vary. Some people are snickering over her plight, and have created a couple of snarky hashtags on the subject: #PrayForSophie and #SophieStrong. Others are enraged that she would dare ask for anything at all, considering that she already has a chef, household staff, two nannies and an assistant (in all honestly, one wonders what that assistant is doing at the moment). Surely she’s got time to open letters and grace functions. Rideau Cottage has 22 rooms. Can’t one of them serve as an office for Sophie? A few have suggested that she take some of her husband’s generous salary and pay an assistant with that, or that she start charging for her time so as to foot the bill for whatever she needs to keep the show on the road. However, a sizeable number of people are in support of granting Sophie’s request. She is already very busy, given that her presence as the prime minister’s wife is expected at everything from dinners to galas to international events – and three kids will keep any woman on her toes. On top of all that, she has lent her intelligence, charm and pretty face to increasing the exposure of a number of worthy endeavours. Anyway, doesn’t Michelle Obama command a staff of two dozen? Stop bellyaching and give her that extra assistant! Those who are hesitant to agree that Sophie should have an extra assistant, for whatever reason, are accused of tall poppy syndrome (or, less poetically, plain old sour grapes).

My own feelings on the subject lie somewhere in the middle …. It seems that Sophie’s heart is in the right place. She knows that she possesses a great deal of social sway, and she wants to use it to help others. She recognizes that, as the prime minister’s wife, she is in a unique position to share her considerable talents to the betterment of society. And it takes balls to ask for help if you’re not poor or abused or a visible minority …. In addition to all that, Sophie coming forward admitting that she can’t juggle everything people have tossed her way since her husband became our prime minister has shone a spotlight on the invisible work many women do and what it’s really worth. This is a good thing, since unpaid  (and, unless it’s Mother’s Day, unnoticed) work comprises a significant amount of what many women do with their day. Feminists have long lamented how often women carry the lion’s share of duties relating to the home and childcare and (increasingly, as gaps in the system widen) eldercare, in addition to bringing home half the proverbial bacon.

On the other hand, she’s not the only one – by far – who finds her days too short for the many calls on her time. Many people find it difficult to fulfil even their basic obligations to their family and their workplace without burning out. Many of these same people also make an effort to donate money and time to charitable pursuits. This money and time usually has to be diverted from other areas of their life. If I give $50 to the Salvation Army, I may not be able to give $50 to the Mission – or spend $50 on a new dress. Spending Friday morning helping our local food bank means I can’t show up at my daughters’ school to read to the kindergarten class or supervise a trip to the library, or stay home in my pyjamas and write a blog post. If I have a spic-and-span house, I’m probably serving hot dogs and dippable veggies for dinner. If, on the other hand, I’m making a beautiful meal from scratch, I probably havn’t cleaned the oven or washed the floors. And if I’m on a date with Ryan, an outing with my girls or a bender with my girlfriends, chances are that nothing is getting done. Because you can’t have it all. Nobody can. Not even the prime minister’s wife.

Choosing priorities is a fact of life for everyone. Nobody expects Sophie to go to everything, all the time. She’s only one person, and reasonable people know that. Sophie herself should have learned that by now. You can’t please everyone, so you must choose your priorities. (And isn’t that a great song? You’re welcome.) Finite resources are a reality of life. As for comparisons to Michelle Obama, she’s the first lady. That position doesn’t actually exist in Canada. Not to mention that America has ten times the population of Canada …. Michelle probably receives a hell of alot more invitations, solicitations and obligations than Sophie. Sophie wasn’t elected, Justin was. Some of her perceived duties may fall more in the category of expensive hobbies than necessities. She might just have to work with what she’s got ….

I suppose I’m also somewhat disappointed in Sophie for her approach to having it all. As a working wife, and mother of two children, there are many times when I feel like I just can’t do it all. So I don’t. I keep the house reasonably clean and the food decently healthy, and I try to make eye contact when my family is talking to me. Sometimes, I do special things, sometimes I just get by. Something’s gotta give, as they say, and I don’t have the option of plugging the dam with another assistant (I don’t even have one). Isn’t that a more realistic approach? To say that I can’t have or do it all, so I’m going to move my resources around until I’ve covered the basics, and then pick an extra or two if time and things warrant? Maybe the expectations dumped on the average woman wouldn’t be quite so heavy if more women said no, rather than begging for help to achieve the ridiculous and perpetuate the myth.