The Power Of Not Shutting Up

In my weekly Spanish conversation group today the quality of conversation seemed to be gradually slipping into a very boring discussion about economics.  There was no critique, everyone, myself excluded, was going on about the global economy like conservative policy wonks until I put my two bits in.  They were talking about our wonderful Canadian economic stability then I weighed in about disgraceful Canadian economic inequality.  The gloves didn't come off.  But I can't say that no one blinked.  It really got people thinking and talking.  I had simply, with some sense of timing, dropped a little bomb to change the PH of our chat and boy what a difference.  People really began to re-examine the theme of economics as a moral and ethical matter and I am hoping that this won't be our last time.  I did get in the last word (hee-hee!) when I declared, "the people are the economy.  No people, no economy."  It seemed as though they were having an epiphany moment as they repeated the words to themselves.  One of these people is an economics student.  I really hope that this conversation has informed and I mean reformed and shaped with some timeless human values his way of thinking and the way he relates between money and human beings and humanistic values.
     I believe in the power of not shutting up.  I have already mentioned recently the butterfly effect.  Yes, many horrible things happen in the world.  And so do good things.  There are people who care and if those of us who do care can care enough to not shut up then we will begin to see change happen.  It isn't enough to settle for one foreign language conversation group that meets once a week.  Our words and our behaviour have to have a daily effect in order to create a cumulative impact. 
     Three of the five in my group today are youngish to middle age men.  At age 58 I have already accepted that I'm the token geezer, but here I digress.  When the subject of the extreme social and economic inequality in Mexico came up I mentioned that instead of drinking beer or other alcohol when I was in Mexico City and Puebla I had money to share with the many grandmother beggars and indigenous women with young children who have nowhere to live and have to survive by begging on the street, making themselves so heartrendingly vulnerable because this country is so poorly governed.  And here in Canada we really are not that much better given our current homelessness and housing affordability crisis.
     But whether I am giving pesos to beggars in Mexico or loonies to panhandlers in Vancouver I am still just the little Dutch boy trying to plug with his finger the hole in the dyke.  In potential we have the resources and the wealth to solve our poverty and inequality problems many times over.  This is also possible in Mexico which, contrary to popular myth, is not a poor country, but one that is  scandalously unequal.  Not any one of us has the ability or the resources to solve the world's problems all alone but we all have a role to play and acts and words of kindness and justice never fall to the ground unheeded.  We have only to get our head out of our ass and start looking, hearing, caring and acting.