Letting Go

I’m told that the Welshman who started working in my office after I began my leave of absence has hung a huge Welsh flag in his office. Curious. I wonder if he did the same here before emigrating. I have a Canadian flag on the wall of the lounge where I’m living in Wales but have never had one on my living room wall in Vancouver. Hmmm.

We tend to become more of what we are when we’re no longer where we were. There seems to be a need to preserve what we left by over emphasizing it in the place we go. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s the feeling that if we don’t overdo it, the move alone would cause it to evaporate and a piece of our history would be lost. Perhaps a fuzzy future is clarified by a connection to the past. Perhaps the discomfort of being in unfamiliar surroundings is made easier by surrounding yourself with things familiar. I think it’s the last one for me. But taken too far, it creates more problems than it resolves.

I see more burkas in Wales than in any of the Muslim countries I’ve visited. The volume at which the Muslims scream their heritage is causing their new fellow countrymen to cover their ears and leave the room. Those that can afford it have deserted the city core leaving only poor white and immigrants in their wake; inner city schools are 80% black. And the Welsh aren’t just leaving the neighborhood, they’re leaving the country. Many of the whites I speak to are working on an exit strategy, hoping to emigrate to Canada, the US or Australia.

Those that can’t or won’t leave are becoming more Welsh by emphasizing their Welshness with their language and customs. The valleys north and west of Cardiff are largely white communities where the Welsh language is more common and while there are few jobs there since the mines closed (up to 50% of some communities are on the dole), it’s preferable to integrating, to having who they are, changed.

My wife calls it the psyche of the defeated. Nations that have been subjugated to another nations laws turn inward and emphasize who they are as defiance to their subjugator, forever harbouring the fantasy of overthrowing their overlords. In Canada it’s Quebec, in the UK it’s Wales.

I see it as excessive homogeneity combined with a fear of the unknown. The unknown future isn’t as comforting as the known past and that leads to a repetition of doing things the same way because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”. It’s where our traditions come from and there's comfort there. But it's the desire for sameness that's dangerous. You can't be Quebecois if you can't trace your roots to France and you can't be Welsh if you're not white and have an oddly spelt name. It's playground exclusion, wallowing in the past and taking pride in something into which the individual had no input. And taken to extremes people die. Hitler wasn’t the first to attempt ethnic cleansing and sadly won’t be the last.

The past is a powerful thing and we’re reluctant to let go because it feels as disrespectful as speaking ill of the dead. But there are new horizons out there...if you’re brave enough to lose sight of the shore.