Redundancy blues

It was D-Day at work yesterday - no-one knew where the bombs would fall, or who'd be culled.

The problem with D-Day, of course, is that it's so personal - you're the one being shot - it's you the bullet's going to hit. This is not a movie, it's not a manufactured drama, it's your life.

Plus, unless you're some kind of monster, while you're desperate not to be culled yourself, you really, really don't want your friends to go either. So you're trying to avoid the shrapnel, while looking out of the corner of your eye to make sure your friends are still ok, and hoping whatever moves you've made to protect them will have been enough.

When the hiheidyins call you in and tell you whether you've got the chop or not, your first reaction, on hearing you haven't, is "Thank God!" Which, of course, translated, means "Thank God it's not me." So who is it? And how do you go back into the office without showing your relief, so you don't hurt the person who is the target? He probably doesn't deserve it any more than you do. What do you say to someone whose livelihood's just gone straight down the pan? You certainly can't comfort him because you've still got what he hasn't, which makes you the last person he wants to hear.

Redundancy is horrible; it's divisive, reduces people to their essentials and, with luck, can bring you together. But it needs to be done with whatever humanity can be summoned up. What it shouldn't be is needlessly cruel.

Not so much cliches, more the tactful disavowal of truth...

In terms of commiseration, the British aren't much good. With some brilliant exceptions, they're either so embarrassed they gush, or so shy they mutter inaudibly and while you're trying to work out what they said they smile awkwardly and leave, having got it over with. This isn't to condemn them - they face difficult situations with kindness, even if they don't really know how to express it.

I've been thinking about the things people unused to suffering say to make you feel better, and they tend to have two things in common - these phrases are so universally used that they're almost cliches, but they're not cliches because although they sound true they're actually inaccurate in much the same proportions as likening a mild bout of flue to bubonic plague. Yes, both make you feel ill. That's as far as it goes.

For instance:

"When one door closes, another door opens"

Really? Prove it.

And re the opening door, how can we assume it's a good thing? It may be (and in this climate, probably is) the door to the lengthening dole queue. It may be opening just to allow someone to come through and kick you down further. And what happens if the only door to the room you're in is the one that's just closed? How do you get out, let alone as far as the door that's opening? You get my point...

How about this one?

"Time heals"
NB. This is a stock commiseration to those in mourning; people tend not to say it to someone who's just lost a leg. That would be crass.

No, it doesn't. What actually happens is that time distances you from the pain, which you feel continuously at first. As time goes on, intervals appear between pain which gradually get longer. At that point you start to remember happy times, people as they were, and remember them with love. The pain, however, does come back and is no less intense when it does. It hurts just as much. But the intervals come again and you learn to live with it.

So, if you can, please avoid these worn out staples. I'm not sure why they're so ubiquitous. Perhaps it's an unwillingness to explore an embarrassing subject. Perhaps it's the fear that if you once allowed yourself to hear what you're saying you'd hide beneath the bedclothes and never come out again? But I suspect it's inexperience combined with the need to not make the pain worse. If you say, "I'm so sorry you've lost your job; you'll probably never get another one. God, it's going to be tough," or "I'm so sorry he's dead. I hate to think how much you'll miss him and how unhappy you're going to be for so long," all you do is make life more difficult for your friend. But there has to be a middle way...

In the news today is an interview with the woman apparently known as 'the Mother of Believers' who has been recruiting young, impressionable women to become suicide bombers.

I don't agree with suicide bombing, of course - it's an appallingly violent form of protest which invariably kills the protester and always takes innocents with him or her (rather than influential opposition figures, few young kids having access to anyone politically or religiously important). This is the grass roots of warfare - ordinary people killing ordinary people. It's almost impossible to guard against, which is why it's so effective.

But the thing I object to most is her methods of recruiting. For someone to be so fanatical about her religion that she's willing to kill children, and make them murderers in the process, is appalling enough. But the worse inquity lies in compounding the brain-washing process by taking a wavering child and having her raped, which in a muslim community is even more deeply shameful for the victim than in the Western world, and then telling her that the only way to expiate her shame is to kill herself for the glory of Allah, and take her enemies with her.

In my world, religion's about spirituality and belief; in the Mother of Believer's world, it's about the callous abuse of children who she sacrifices happily for the cause. But whose cause? I doubt if Allah's happy...