My mind currently is occupied with a lot of daily and work tasks, from trying to organize a full week meeting for our partner representatives in the Hague next week, to trying to get my bathroom light fixed, because it seems to keep causing my electricity to black out in half my apartment (which also means no heating, no internet), understanding my toddlers needs, grieving personal loss, thinking about friends who are struggling, trying to not freak out when the schedule for my apartment buildings renovations is changing again and what that means for my single household logistics etc. etc. In the end, the care for my child and grief are emotionally taxing, the rest is logistics, but the combination of all, leaves me at times overwhelmed. My manager caringly asks me how I am doing (shout out to managers understanding well being!), and I answer, at times okay, at times not so okay, but there is not much I can change about this. And I realize this is okay, it’s in the end part of my life’s choices, but also life happening as it is. I try to ground myself on my yoga mat whenever I feel I have the energy and even made it to my bootcamp this week, which was a cold, windy but dry evening, and considering the rain the whole week, already a great win.

In other words, I try to look at the upside of things, especially when I have made it to my art class on Sunday morning, which is like a sanctuary of joy and inspiration that keeps my inner creativity burning.

But then, I open the news, and feel a thump in my stomach, one that is easily paralyzing. It shows me that the life I lead is one in so so many ways one of exception and privilege. I know this, I have felt it before, but somehow it hits harder these days.

My mind cannot reconcile the ‘often’ mundane life challenges I experience (even in a way the luxury of being able to grieve) with the gravity so many others have to face. What makes it probably even harder to stomach is knowing some of my colleagues in countries I communicate and collaborate with, actually are part of these massive human tragedies, caused by our unforgiving international geo-political politics and power play. But also on the Dutch national level, I find it mind-boggling how we seem so oblivious nowadays for caring for those who simply don’t get their daily needs met or worse, their right to food, housing and care violated. In essence I am finally awakened to the reality of injustice I have worked on, but now – maybe – for the first time dare to understand, or no longer put a blind eye to it in my personal life and being? I am putting a question mark here, as in the end it is not my lived experience and really keep on wondering if I am able to understand truly what this means.

The only consoling thought I keep coming up with is that somehow we need to bring back or perhaps reinvent solidarity in all aspects of our lives. It is definitely not an answer to all of the above, but what I would like to figure out is how can this key value be a driving force for all that we are part of? Because what we see now is an endless spiral of self-serving interest that knows no bounds, but more importantly degrades, demoralizes, facilitates human atrocities, climate change, destruction of environment, species and unabatedly attacks the dignity and humanity each of us deserve.

How can we really create the ‘unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group’ as one of the definitions of solidarity. Because the stakes were already high and for many solidarity was already beyond their wildest dreams, but at least there was a dream. Now the common interest – seeing, believing and respecting our commonality as humans and that this a safeguard for all of us as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human rights, is undermined so fervently in the current international order (or chaos is perhaps a better signifier of our current global state of affairs), I have to ask the question: what right do each of us have to think and act differently? A question we need to ask our politicians on a daily basis, but also ourselves, do I see an opportunity to act out of solidarity or follow my own interest? For example, I keep on making a lot of wrong consumer choices myself, but slowly I see progress in my own habits of figuring out more sustainable options, and what guides me is this deep felt need for solidarity. I am not one to quote religious scripture often, but this saying does resonate Matthew 7:12: ‘So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.’ This saying does have ourselves as a starting point, and positively interpreted it may have given rise to one of the main thoughts as part of the how to apply all fundamental rights: ‘Freedom (or liberty) ends, where another person’s begins.’

So, no I do not have answers, but yes, I do have an idea, let’s grow our solidarity. Every time you want to pass a judgement on a situation, every time you want make a consumer choice, every time you feel you understand an issue, ask yourself: Am I acting out of self-interest, or can I figure out what it would mean to act out of solidarity here? I will be challenged myself doing this every day, but I have to start somewhere, because the incredible suffering caused by not asking this question, makes me complicit as well.