Privilege, stereotypes and recognising you will never know how it is for someone else.

Has anyone been watching 'Timeless'? It's a new E4 programme where three people chase a 'criminal' through time and, like art should, it uncovers the many prejudices which have existed throughout history. 

The team is made up of a woman who comes face to face with the old school sexism, the black man who ends up in scrapes simply because of the colour of his skin and finally the white good looking man who realises he does not have these barriers. Finally, they come face to face with an 'Old Boys Club', inherited wealth and the advantages this gives its members. 

While it may have shown how far we have come (and how far we have to go). It also showed something else - how privilege affects everything. However much empathy one may have, you will never understand someone else's life. 

If you were born a man, you will never know how it really feels to be a woman. You will never know how it is to be felt up, objectified, feel scared when being followed home, look at your outfit and question if you are asking for it, know that you are earning less than your male contemporaries, be asked when you will have kids, know you only have so long to have kids, know you don't have control over your body, wait for your period to see if you're pregnant, be called a slut, be called frigid, shave or wax over 50% of your skin, have to go to work while feeling like your stomach is being stabbed repeatedly etc etc. 

If you were born one race, you will never know how it is like to be born another. How it is to be suspected by police because of your skin colour, how it is to have friends who have been shot by police, how it is to have people cross the street, how it is to hear from your family how they were forced into worse schools etc during segregation. 

If you were born into a certain religion, you will never know what it is like to be anything else. If you aren't Jewish, you don't know what it is like to have family lost in the Holocaust. If you aren't Muslim, you don't know what it is like to be stared at with fear when you board a plane or say a prayer, or see your religion dragged through the mud when ever a terrorist attack occurs. If you aren't Christian, you don't know what it is like to be questioned on your purity by every male you come into contact with. 

If you have money you will never know what it is like to not have enough for food. If you have an education you will never know what it is like to be illiterate. If you have a country to call home you will never know what it is like to run for your life. If you have a loving family you will never know what it feels like to be truly alone. If you have running water you will never know what it is like to get risk your life because you are thirsty. 

That's the thing you see, you will never know what it is like to have someone else's life. You will never know what it is like to be grouped into another stereotype. You will be in your group, whether you asked for that or not. 

So what can you do about it? Try and show empathy. Try and understand that some groups get it better than others. Try and imagine what it is like to be in their shoes. Then try and challenge it. 

If you were the one at a disadvantage, what would you want someone else to do?

If you were being judged by a police force by your skin, you would want someone to look beyond that and look at the facts. If you were treated like a bad person just because of your religion, you would ask people to look at you as an individual. If you were scared because you had a vagina, then you would want that vagina to be protected. If you had spent years running for your life, searching for a new home, you would want to be welcomed to somewhere safe. 

We are all stereotyped, there is no denying it, but right now some people get it easier. But it could be on the other foot. You could be the one who is being judged on something they can't control, the one who needs help or the one who needs inclusion. 

So recognise your privilege and treat others as you would want to be treated if you weren't so damn lucky, because you are really really lucky, trust me. 

Written by a privileged girl from the UK. 

The people in our moments. The moments in our lives.

Life is made up of moments. Moments we laugh, cry, yawn, sleep and love. Moments we hate, envy, eat, pity and dream. Every moment of our life makes up the person we are at the end of it. When those lights finally go out you don’t know which memory will come to your mind. Will it be that boy you loved at the sweet age of 22? Will it be that child you so desperately wanted through years of IVF? Will it be that friend you had but lost contact with? Or will be a stranger: a nurse? A refugee you saw on the TV? A child you met on your travels? We don’t know, we will never know. That is the beauty of it.

Deaths and mourning bring out on reflection, not on only the life that has passed but our own. The life that we are still living. The moments that make it up.

I have been thinking about the people who make up those moments. I remember spending a night in a hostel in Manchester. I met a group of guys who were there to watch the match and they took pity on the girl there to do her dissertation research. I remember going to a bar, going clubbing and having a fantastic evening. But I don’t remember them and that makes me quite sad. For all the moments that made up that evening, it was them who made them. Total strangers who decided to extend a hand of kindness to a girl working away on a laptop in the common room on a Friday night. Yet my memory decided to put them out of my mind and replace them with people they deemed more important. What is more important than kindness? Maybe love.

I remember the few people that I have truly loved in my life. I remember the moments they made me smile, the moments of passion and the many, many moments I cried. I cried over the loss of them, the loss of making more of those moments and the loss of that time. But what about the people we only love for a moment. The people we kiss in a bar when we are 18 and it is the done thing to do. The people you dance with and swap numbers but never follow up. The people you spend a cold, lonely evening messaging on tinder but never meet up. For those moments they were the centre of our universe, so where are they now? What could they have been? Who could they have been?

Whenever anyone makes up a moment in our life, they enter the pool of candidates for the last person we remember. While I hope that will be the soul-mate sitting by my bedside, or the grandchild holding my hand, or my Mother who has always been there; it could be that boy I loved at 22? That child I held in my arms in Uganda? That person who taught me the true meaning of life without even sharing a name. We never know, so maybe no one should stay a stranger, or drift into becoming an acquaintance, what would the world be if everyone became a friend?