Af­ter last week’s un­rest, these four “f” words are prob­a­bly not on every­one’s mind but they bear sur­pris­ing rel­e­vance when you take a mo­ment to think about. Fear, fair and fare are ho­mo­phones which are all alike in sound but dif­fer in spelling and mean­ing. For me, they gave rise to a bar­rage of ques­tions, from which, ad­mit­ted­ly, no an­swer has come forth. At the end of my thought process, I do be­lieve, the first step to­ward progress be­came ev­i­dent.

When videos be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing of tyres burn­ing, roads be­ing blocked and pos­si­ble vi­o­lence, it was fear that drove me to reach out to friends and fam­i­ly that worked or trav­elled along those routes, to warn them and check on their safe­ty. I was con­cerned for the safe­ty of pro­tes­tor and po­lice­man/woman alike as such tense sit­u­a­tions, fu­elled by adren­a­line, anger, frus­tra­tion, des­per­a­tion even, can turn bad in an in­stant. I pre­sume these very in­di­vid­u­als on ei­ther side of the con­fronta­tion were on high alert, feel­ing threat­ened in a po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion.

This then leads to the ques­tion of fair­ness. In the events of last week, or any oth­er dis­pute or “stand-off” sit­u­a­tion, are we, (and I use “we” mean­ing hu­man­i­ty) ... treat­ing peo­ple fair­ly, equal­ly, with­out favouritism or dis­crim­i­na­tion? Are we be­hav­ing in a right and rea­son­able man­ner? Are we let­ting per­son­al opin­ions in­flu­ence our judge­ments? Are we im­par­tial, bal­anced and un­prej­u­diced in our thoughts, words and deeds? These are some, for­give the pun, fair­ly tough but es­sen­tial ques­tions we must ask our­selves to keep our­selves in check.

Why? How then shall we fare as a so­ci­ety, if not? Are we so gripped by fear that we can on­ly pro­tect and safe­guard “self” and self-in­ter­est at the ex­pense of “oth­er”? Do we mat­ter any more or less than any oth­er? How will we as a peo­ple, fare through these very chal­leng­ing mid-pan­dem­ic times when salaries are cut, jobs are lost and bel­lies are banned? Covid-19 had sent shock­waves through­out the world, adding stress and strain to al­ready shaky in­sti­tu­tions, most re­cent­ly, spark­ing vi­o­lence and ten­sion in our own coun­try.

So, what’s my point and where am I go­ing with all this ho­mo­phone talk? Last week, I had the priv­i­lege of a chance en­counter with a 5 year old, which proved my very point... While sit­ting in my car in a car park, with two of my chil­dren, while my hus­band and my el­dest son went in­to the store, I un­buck­led my seat­belt and turned around to face my chil­dren and chat with them. A few min­utes in­to our con­ver­sa­tion, I glanced across to the ve­hi­cle next to us, to see a lit­tle face look­ing at me through the glass. He im­me­di­ate­ly waved at me and sig­nalled to me to roll down my win­dow. I fol­lowed his friend­ly re­quest and what fol­lowed was the sweet­est, most in­no­cent and heart warm­ing con­ver­sa­tion which put the biggest smile on my face. A sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion, be­tween two strangers, with a lit­tle over a thir­ty year age dif­fer­ence be­tween us, where we both spoke and lis­tened to each oth­er: sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We shared sto­ries, asked ques­tions and even had a good laugh. It was an un­ex­pect­ed and up­lift­ing ex­change.

So, here comes the point, like the ho­mo­phone, we all will make our “sound” and share our truth, but we must gen­uine­ly lis­ten to grasp the mean­ing and un­der­stand the con­text from which we speak, in or­der to get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of each oth­er and fare well to­geth­er. We are each dif­fer­ent but need and de­serve to both speak and more im­por­tant­ly, to lis­ten.

Jessie-Marie Chaves

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