Learning about what’s important

I’m not sure if you’re aware of an amazing feature on the website Reddit. It’s called “TIL” shortened for “today I learned”. It has amazing mostly useless facts that people have just become aware of.

So, for example, yesterday I learned that The Star-Spangled Banner became the anthem of the United States (US) only in 1931. This followed a huge outcry caused by Robert Ripley, who denounced in one of his famous “Believe It or Not” cartoons that the country had no official anthem up until then.

I was floored. I genuinely had no idea this was the case, and was even more shocked that I reacted as if I cared. I’m sure that I didn’t actually care, or at least I hope I didn’t. After all, if the people of 1931 could hardly be bothered to settle the matter, then who was I to?

It might be that as the US was dealing with the Great Depression, its citizens were more concerned about feeding their families than they were about having an official national anthem. This makes sense if you think about it.

It raises an interesting question: how do we prioritise what we worry about? It’s obvious that a person in the jungle running away from a charging elephant won’t be concerned about potentially sullying his new shoes (bought recently on Spree). However, mostly we aren’t living in a fight or flight scenario, and so the spectrum can be a little vague.

The last few weeks of my father’s illness demonstrated that. As much as I’m intrigued and adore politics, global events, and pretty much anything aside from the Grand Prix, in the time that led up to his death, I could hardly have cared if Trump, Biden, or Borat for that matter, was elected president of the US. What became important was the minutia of how many millilitres of fluid my dad consumed, about his pain level, and who was on duty. Suddenly, making sure that my phone was charged was more important than whether Cyril Ramaphosa announced Level 2 or 16. For a few weeks, priorities evolved unintentionally, until the world shrunk to the size of his room.

This makes the re-joining of the world so much more difficult. In many ways, the week of mourning – shiva – protects the mourners from what they will perceive to be irrelevant. That is until the time is over, and the need to slowly assume some form of normalcy is required. It’s by no means an easy process. In my experience, after the loss of both parents in the past few years, the day of re-entry into the world is one of the most difficult days. Because just like things hadn’t mattered for some time, they now need to.

It has been a few days since we re-entered the world. In just those few days, I have endeavoured to understand what makes a community turn on itself.

Today I learned that less than two weeks after losing a parent, it’s more important to try save oneself than it is to try and save a community.