How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division

by Elif Shafak

Someone – perhaps a lover, perhaps the whole city – had treated her badly, unfairly.

‘When all this is over, how do you want the world to be different?’

‘I want to be heard.’

‘Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?’

Today, in the twenty-first century, in a deeply divided and increasingly tangled world, craving dignity and equality, overwhelmed by the speed of change and the acceleration of technology, our shared feeling is, ‘Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the humans’ hierarchies?’

How is it possible then that in an era when social media was expected to give everyone an equal voice, so many continue to feel voiceless?

To be deprived of a voice means to be deprived of agency over our own lives. It also means to slowly but systematically become alienated from our own journeys, struggles and inner transformations, and begin to view even our most subjective experiences as though through someone else’s eyes, an external gaze.

‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold s...

Not to be able to tell your story, to be silenced and shut out, therefore, is to be dehumanised. It strikes at your very existence; it makes you question your sanity, the validity of your version of events. It creates a profound, and existential anxiety in us.

when you feel alone don’t look within, look out and look beyond for others who feel the same way, for there are always others, and if you can connect with them and with their story, you will be able to see everything in a new light.

The moment we stop listening to diverse opinions is also when we stop learning. Because the truth is we don’t learn much from sameness and monotony. We usually learn from differences.

We must strive to become intellectual nomads, keep moving, keep learning, resist confining ourselves in any cultural or mental ghetto, and spend more time not in select centres but at the margins, which is where real change always comes from.

Never were so many big promises made to so many for so long, only to have delivered so little in the end.

In reality, though, people were let down, again and again. If this was progress, they felt like its spectators, not beneficiaries.

‘While there is a general awareness of surveillance, the uncertainty about how and why data is collected indicates that it happens without much public interrogation.’

An inbetween-dom. A perplexing interval between a prolonged end and an unknown beginning.

‘He is nothing – but if he can identify with his nation, or can transfer his personal narcissism to the nation, then he is everything.’

‘the individual satisfies his own narcissism by belonging to and identifying himself with the group.

‘I come from many cities and cultures, plural and diverse, but I am also from the ruins and remnants of these, from the memories and forgettings, from the stories and silences.’

I have often wondered what resides in an accent. Is it a presence – an identity, a trajectory, a history? Or is it rather an absence – an estrangement, a withdrawal, a blank space refusing to be filled?

This is not to deny that our accents are fundamentally important to who we are, and they are near and dear to our hearts. They are an inextricable trace of the paths we have travelled, the loves we have loved and never forgotten, the scars we still carry and which still hurt. But that doesn’t mean we are from our accents.

Unlike what nationalist demagogues claim, belonging is not a once-and-for-all condition, a static identity tattooed on our skin; it is a constant self-examination and dynamic revision of where we are, who we are, and where we want to be.

Can we make sacrifices in our life habits for the benefit of forthcoming generations?

We assumed we had the proper definitions of all these core concepts, mostly thanks to the generations that preceded us, who had done the hard work. We surmised that we would never have to deal with ‘the basics’ as we were far beyond that historical stage.

Today the faith that tomorrow will be better than yesterday is simply no more.

‘I am just pain covered with skin.’

Discrimination always starts with words. It starts with language.

In the post-pandemic world we understand better that no country is beyond such concerns. Now we are universally aware that history can go backwards, that progress is neither guaranteed nor steady.

‘What we call the beginning is often the end … The end is where we start from.’*