“Oh what’s the point?” my friend said to me, “Whoever I vote for, it won’t make any difference”. This was an Arab friend in London talking about the upcoming British general election. “And anyway”, he continued, “there is no one I want to vote for. Tony Blair took the country to war against Iraq. The Conservatives are running a xenophobic campaign and supported the war. Only the Liberal Democrats have foreign policies I support and they don’t stand a chance, particularly in my constituency! So what’s the point of voting?”
Just a few weeks earlier I had heard a similar conversation in Riyadh. I had asked a cousin of mine whether he had voted in the municipal elections. “What’s the point?” he had replied with a shrug.
Ah, that phrase, I am too familiar with it. For years I suffered from “what’s the point?” until I got myself into such a depressed state that I started to ask myself “what’s the point of getting out of bed?” and ground down to a complete halt. Thankfully, I have moved on from my “what’s the point?” way of thinking and am much happier as a result.
The problem with “what’s the point?” is that it is too easy to cast ourselves as insignificant. I liked the scene in the animated film Antz, where right at the beginning of the film, the ant played by Woody Allen complains to his psychiatrist that he feels so insignificant, and the psychiatrist screams back: “But you are insignificant!” And when it comes to voting, a friend of mine once told me that an American academic had proved that the statistical value of an individual vote is zero.
The same kind of thinking is often offered by those who support social change but refuse to campaign for it. Once again, I plead guilty to having been one of these people myself. I once thought, “what’s the point of saying what I really think if all it will do is get people to personally attack me?” I was part of the silent majority, the millions who assume that because they are in the minority they should stay quiet and keep their thoughts to themselves. Of course, quite often, this is a wise course of action. Being a minority makes you vulnerable, be it because you hold a minority view or because you come from an ethnic or religious minority, wherever you happen to live. But sometimes people censor themselves not because of real fears about their safety but because of social conformity. You know the argument, the people who say, “I don’t want to be a social pariah, I will wait for society to change before I change my ways...”
My late father, God rest his soul, used to tell me that I should pick my battles, that was how you won a war. My problem is that I turned that into an excuse only to pick battles I thought I could win. “What’s the point of fighting a battle you are likely to lose?” was my argument. That was until my father was diagnosed with cancer. It was the aggressive inoperable kind. He was faced with a battle he could not possibly win and yet he fought it with all his might. I soon changed my mind about “what’s the point?” Then I found myself face to face with it again when a doctor in Riyadh did not want to save my father’s life: “What’s the point of saving his life today?” he had said, “he’s terminally ill; he’s going to die anyway, maybe in a day, maybe in a week, maybe in six months, but he’s going to die.” I stood my ground and the doctor admitted my father into intensive care. He saved his life that day, despite himself, and he was right, my father did die not long after, three weeks later as it happens. But was there a point to those three weeks of life? Absolutely.
After my father died, I made a promise to change my defeatist way of thinking. For years I had wanted to write but had not done it because the chances of getting published were so slim. After my parents’ deaths, I used the money I inherited to quit working and finally start to write. Not immediately, it took time for me to find the resolve to take the big step, but eventually I did, and now, two years on, I have written two books, both as yet unpublished, and I find that I was asking myself the wrong question all those years. Writing, just like voting or expressing an opinion, is not just about achieving your desired outcome, it is about getting your voice heard. Whether it is a family vote on choosing a color scheme for your new kitchen or a parliamentary vote to choose a new prime minister, the essence is the same, the point is that it gives you a chance to express your views.
So I’d like to dedicate this column to the candidate from the Liberal Democratic Party in my friend’s constituency and all those who vote for her. She won’t win and all those who vote for her know this, yet they still make the effort to vote because it is their chance to stand up for policies they believe in.
— Iman Kurdi is a Saudi writer living in London. [email protected]
