At around 5.40 am on Friday, my internal alarm clock woke me up. As i stretched and proceeded to have the usual internal argument with myself as to whether to go back to bed for another 20 minutes, my hands stretched to the left side of my bed and my fingers felt and grabbed my phone. The lights of the phone came on after a few uncoordinated swipes and I proceeded to wait the one or two seconds it usually took for my eyes to adjust to what I was looking at. Vision all cleared up, I was looking at a push notification from The Guardian News: Britain had voted to leave the European Union.
What followed was a mixture of instant panic and sheer disbelief and as you can imagine, any hope of going back to bed withered away like darkness flees in the sight of light as I tried to comprehend how anyone would have imagined that this was a good idea. A part of me wondered whether I was dreaming and I blinked twice – just in case.
As the minutes quickly turned to hours, it was clear that this was not a drill and the people had chosen.
I immediately took to twitter to spell out what my understanding of the implications of the whole thing was and to my comfort my thinking was not far from what thought leaders and other entrepreneurs were thinking: “We have got a real shit show on our hands mate” .
As 12 noon rolled on, it became clear that all plans of achieving anything remotely fruitful were a mere wish, i stumbled upon the quote from Heraclitus which i had created earlier in the week to post on my Instagram and Facebook fan page.
Reading it gave me some peace and i managed to have a few laughs at the entire situation.
It is still not clear what Britain’s future in the European Union is, I hear there are calls for another referendum. (I am yet to see how feasible that would be).
What is clear to me however, is that there needs to be a real change in the way political messages are passed on to the ordinary man or woman. All these cunning untruths and smart play on people’s inclination towards xenophobia are not necesary, neither are they helpful in the grand scheme of things because in the end, your children and their children would be forced to live with the consequences of whatever decision you make and a secluded Britain or England (I hear that Nicola Sturgeon is planning a new Scottish Referendum) would not help anyone.
Another thing is clear: we need to read more and not just ‘vote with our hearts’ or ‘take our country back’ especially when that country no longer has the luxury of colonies serving it, as it did in the past. Surely, if your heart tells you that a shark looks pleasing enough to swim with you would immediately ignore it and proceed to put as much distance between you and the shark, as possible. So why ‘vote with your heart’ on something as key as this without reading up properly or even easier, asking the right questions to the key messengers?
I am not a political analyst and l hardly write post related to politics but this one got me really riled up and I hope it is sorted out soon.
While it is being sorted out, this situation presents the perfect opportunity for emerging economies to get their act together and flourish.
In the end, I believe we will all be fine.
I hope you have a pleasant Sunday and an even more pleasant week ahead.
Love,
Chika
