Why is it so Hard to Stay Positive?

I swear, I do try to look for the positives in most people. I always try to focus on the behaviour not on who they are as individuals. I believe it does little good to insult the individual even when I profoundly disagree with their comments or actions. But it is so hard to maintain that outlook when people such as the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford uses words such as "animal" or "nutcase" when describing someone who has a mental illness.

Premier Ford used those words to describe a patient of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto who had been on an authorized, unaccompanied trip into the community. He did not return when he was supposed to and has since left the country. The individual in question had committed murder but had been declared not criminally responsible. As his mental illness had been progressively dealt with - assumingly by medication he was given more and more privileges. Whether or not he was released too soon, whether or not he needed more supervision are questions that should be answered, but to call him an animal is just wrong. To further suggest that such individuals should be sent to jail (rather than a mental health facility) because jails can just as easily deal effectively with such individuals demonstrates a profound ignorance of mental illness and even worse a complete lack of any awareness of how our correctional system functions.

One might accept or at least understand how an uneducated, perhaps somewhat intellectually slow and certainly a socially isolated individual might hold such beliefs. If one lived in some far distant backwater of our country and had no opportunity to learn about mental illness, perhaps one could forgive the use of such words. If within that individual's family there had never been anyone who demonstrated aberrant or illegal behaviours perhaps one could at least partially understand the lack of human compassion. But I would hope that anyone who runs and gets elected to be premier of a province would be better educated, brighter and more compassionate than that.

It may be too much to expect that those who get elected to our highest political offices have a clear working knowledge of all parts of our society. It may be a fantasy of only the most naive amongst us that our leaders will base their statements on facts and commonly accepted reality. Our most devout wish the government's actions will be based on some compassion and understanding of the fragility of humans may be a prayer forever lost amongst the debris of fallen stars and dreams. Instead, the people get stuck with politicians who spew the rhetoric of the illiterate, the uneducated or the narrow-minded who are only interested in maintaining their status quo. Instead of leaders who serve everyone - we get politicians who only serve those who will re-elect them.

Lord knows, we might not deserve better- but we surely need better.