The chance that it’s gonna go wrong does not exist, because I wasn’t comparing it with right.
~ Ricardo Semler
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 – This article
As some of you may know, a recent UK visa application by Elly was refused. This was a trying time for her and we are glad that her following application, in which she had invested a lot of time, has been approved yesterday.
The experience has been a blessing for us, because the refusal allowed us to see the support and love of our friends and family who have written many declarations for us in support of Elly’s UK visa application. It made me realise that in times of need, the blessing of our relationships becomes evident. This realisation helped us to experience the whole situation with a more relaxed and open attitude.
On one day however, I did feel very frustrated by the situation. The frustration was not stimulated by the refusal, as you might think. My frustration came about when I was contemplating the surprise that many of our friends and family members had been expressing to us. We have heard many statements of the following kind:
- How come they keep the good guys out, and not the bad guys?
- I can understand that they want to keep out the wrong kind of people, but why are they keeping you out?
- You guys aren’t fortune-hunters. They need to be refused, not you.
I suddenly understood that it is exactly this type of thinking, that there are some people who deserve to enter a country and some people who don’t, that contributes to the situation that Elly found herself in. I felt frustration because I desired more understanding that this thinking, and not the UK border control, is the real cause of our situation.
When we accept the idea that some people are ‘right’ enough to enter a country, then there must also be people who are not. If we accept this idea, then we must also accept that there will be some people who think that we are among the ‘wrong’ people. We cannot think that this is unreasonable, because it is impossible to come to a universal agreement on who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’, because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are judgements and they are therefore not true.
I also started wondering why some of my European friends call non-western Europeans ‘fortune-hunters’ and at the same time never question what they have done themselves to ‘deserve’ to be born in an EU country. This thinking made me even more frustrated, because I clearly saw that my need for fairness for everyone is not being met in the world we are living in at the moment.
The frustration was a great messenger to me. When I saw that it was showing me my need for understanding and fairness, I welcomed it. When I welcomed it, it started to disappear.