Year of the Selfie

The past 12 months might go down in his­tory as a ’selfie’ year; Selfie with a cap­i­tal ’S’. We take end­less pho­tographs of our­selves, our faces, our bod­ies, our food and our clothes and send them round willy nilly to our kith and kin, who send us back self­ies of them­selves. ’Our’ and ’My’ fol­low closely be­hind: my child, my house, my gar­den, my books and our chil­dren, our house, our gar­den, our books. It’s like a wicker-work table top – all the cir­cles con­cen­trat­ing to a focal point: me.

Jan­u­ary is New Year, the time when we re­solve to bet­ter our­selves. Again, the focus is on me. What about, in­stead, seek­ing to bet­ter our neigh­bours? Get the ad­dress book out and go me­thod­i­cally down the names of those we know who live on their own. Then think of what might pos­si­bly be a cheery anec­dote or ap­pro­pri­ate mes­sage to send to that per­son.

Do I mean a Robert Baden-Pow­ell kind of boy-scout or girl-scout mes­sage? Well, yes and no. We, the sender, must know the re­cip­i­ent well and the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of the mes­sage is all im­por­tant. It might be an offer: “Can I do some shop­ping for you?” sent to a per­son who lives a long way from the shops. “It would be a plea­sure – you know how I enjoy shop­ping!” It might be: “Ter­ri­ble weather, isn’t it? Can I pop in with a cake and we can have a cup of tea and catch up?” sent to an old per­son who hasn’t been able to get out. Or to a per­son re­cently be­reaved, and some­times even more to a per­son whose loved-one died a year ago and is no longer pro­tected by sen­si­tive rel­a­tives: “There’s noth­ing like shar­ing sor­row. Would it help if I came to visit and we shared our feel­ings?”

It seems to me that Jan­u­ary could be a month to lend oth­ers a help­ing hand.