Share some food and find the antidote to despair

Who we eat with says who we are.

Isaac Frisby

Isaac is a PhD candidate in Theology at Durham University and preparing for priesthood in the Church of England.

Three people stand beside a table and smile.

Lewisham Mayor Brenda Dacres with foodbank volunteers.

Lewisham Foodbank.

In my local supermarket a new foodbank collection trolley has appeared with this sign,

“Gift a toy this Christmas…give a gift this Christmas to those who need it most.”

Setting aside the usual ethical dilemma presented by the existence of foodbanks (why do they exist in such a wealthy country?), the sign prompted a thought on the nature of joy. What is more joyful than the surprise of an unexpected gift? After all, Christmas is around the corner, “Joy to the world!”.

That thought came to mind when I was recently asked; how do we cultivate and foster joy? If I’m honest I was a little stumped by the question. What even is joy anyway?

We can too easily and readily conflate it with lesser feelings like happiness or pleasure, which by their nature seem to be fleeting, like a chocolate bar: here one moment, gone the next. Thinking about it, joy seems to be thrown into relief when it is set against one of its opposites: despair. We all know what despair looks like; loneliness, isolation, a hopelessness which can yawn like a great dark chasm, without edges to get purchase on, or without a hand to hold.

Christmas can be an especially potent time for despair. The days are short and often dimmed by heavy cloud and rain. Children’s expectation that Santa will bring all of the latest goodies drives parents into debt to make their hopes come true. Those in dire straits will struggle to scrape together the food that goes into the usual Christmas feast. This combination of dark days and high expectations can and does drive many further into despair. It is this sense of aloneness, of the weight of the world heaped on your shoulders alone, which fuels despair.

This despair is not only reserved for Christmas. We see the climbing rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues in the younger generations. Having been born into the age of the internet and growing up with social media, the temptation to compare with the heavily edited and curated lives of others, encouraged by the platform algorithms themselves, only serves to make young people feel increasingly alone.

This feeling is not helped by the propaganda of the age; that we are all rational, autonomous individuals, whose fulfilment looks like self-reliance, status, and wealth, without the need for anyone else. All this breeds the solipsism and nihilism that so often morphs into despair.

Foodbanks are the proof that this most basic constituent of joy is a struggle for many, from the sheer lack of food to share

What does this despair tell us about joy? If despair is in isolation, bearing our burdens alone, then joy is in being with other people. To return to that chocolate bar, if happiness (and perhaps the despair which comes from having no more chocolate bar) is scoffing it by ourselves, then joy is breaking off a part and sharing it with another. Human beings are naturally social creatures. It is in our very nature to live with one another. If we remain alone, closed off to others, then we nurture the despair that this breeds.

An incredibly simple way we remain connected to each other is by sharing food. If despair is the isolation from others then sharing food is the negation of this isolation. Sharing food is universally important, whether it’s the realpolitik of American high school films (the jock table vs the dork table and who’s allowed to sit with who, encapsulated perfectly by Mean Girls), or the mystical heights of the Christian eucharist. Who we eat with says who we are, with all the potential for exclusion the examples above show. But eating with others says what we are. Sharing food, especially in celebration at a time like Christmas, reminds us that our humanity is only ever shared. This reminder that we are not alone is not a fleeting happiness; it is a confirmation in our very flesh and bones that we are made of the same stuff, that we are never alone.

Many of us will have this joy as part of our everyday lives; foodbanks are the proof that this most basic constituent of joy is a struggle for many, from the sheer lack of food to share. The sign that appeared in my local supermarket is more proof that we already know how simple joy can be. Many foodbanks organise specifically festive food for this season, because we know that not only sharing food, but celebrating in that sharing is crucial to what it means to be human. Even in the morally mixed ecosystem of the foodbank, the need for joy shines through; sharing food in celebration is one of those antidotes for despair. In sharing our food we find our humanity, and what is more joyful than that?

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Politics

25 September 2024

5 min read

Exploring Labour’s parameters of hope

At the party’s conference, meeting mayors and old friends rekindle a restless hope.

David Barclay

David is a partner with the Good Faith Partnership, collaborating on solutions to social problems.

A group of four people stand in front of an even banner, smiling

Labour mayors smiling, despite the weather.

@UKHospKate.

If weather can set the tone for events then the meteorological omens for the Labour Party Conference this year were hardly promising. By the time I’d made it to Liverpool Dockside from the train station I was already soaked and cold, and wondering if anything our new Government was going to say would cut through the gloom and kindle some much-needed hope and optimism.

The downbeat mood of bedraggled conference-goers searching for umbrellas felt like a pretty fair reflection of the wider public as a whole. A recent piece of research found that ‘broken’ was the most common word used to describe the state of the country, and if Keir Starmer had a honeymoon period as Prime Minister it has clearly already long passed. We have become used to politics as a force of chaos and division, and as the events of this summer revealed all too starkly, this state of our public life has left our communities highly vulnerable to the forces of hate and violence that lie closer to the surface than most of us like to admit to ourselves.

Yet my experience over 48 hours in Liverpool did give me cause for optimism, even if that came from some slightly unexpected places.

Mayors are uniquely unburdened by the departmental silos of Westminster and Whitehall, as well as having a direct mandate from the people and communities they are serving.

One of those was the energy of new MPs. Amongst the large intake of Labour MPs there are some seriously impressive people with a vitality and creativity that has been sorely missing from British politics in recent years. I got the chance to speak to Josh MacAlister, the new MP for Whitehaven and Workington, who is a case in point. Josh set up Frontline, a graduate social worker training programme modelled on Teach First which has had huge success in boosting recruitment into a vital part of our public life. He was then asked by the last Government to lead a landmark review into Children’s Social Care, which is without doubt one of the most broken aspects of British politics with private companies making obscene profits from providing terrible care to vulnerable children, leaving a trail of human misery and financial ruin for local Government in its wake. Now he is looking to put the review’s recommendations into practice with a Government that seems far more likely to spark radical change in this area than it’s predecessor. As a foster carer myself who has seen the human cost of the current system up close and personal, meeting Josh gave me real hope that we can do better for the most vulnerable children in our country.

The other politicians who seemed very much in the limelight in Liverpool were Mayors, who now cover more and more of our English cities and regions and are taking an increasingly significant role in our public conversations. I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with the former Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees, and saw first-hand the incredible impact that place-based political leaders can create by convening different leaders and organisations from across the public sector, business and charities around common goals.

Mayors are uniquely unburdened by the departmental silos of Westminster and Whitehall, as well as having a direct mandate from the people and communities they are serving. So seeing increasing amounts of resource and powers flow to Mayors is undoubtedly another cause for hope.

One of my areas of passion is refugee and asylum inclusion, and I was part of several conversations over the Conference on how Mayors and other regional actors could play a bigger role in this policy area. As Marvin Rees used to say as Mayor of Bristol, city leaders see the issue of migration and human mobility in a fundamentally different way to national leaders, because nation-states are defined by borders and therefore constantly obsessed with controlling them, whereas cities by definition exist due to the movement of people, good and ideas, and are therefore much more interested in how policy can lead to greater welcome and connection in order to harness the strengths of having a diverse population. It is this kind of mindset and perspective shift that having stronger Mayors could bring into British politics, and to me at least it feels like a breath of fresh air.

History teaches us that really significant change happens rarely from the top down but rather through constellations of leaders and organisations with similar worldviews but distinct resources and perspectives.

My final source of optimism for change came not for politicians at all but from the friends and colleagues I was able to catch up with or bump into. Having been around the world of politics for nearly two decades, things like Party Conferences are a lovely opportunity to touch base with people I might not otherwise get to see.

Over lunch with an old friend from the Bristol Mayor’s Office, we were reflecting on how being part of a wider political movement can create opportunities for collaboration and mutual support over the years and in different professional and personal contexts. As someone whose ancestors were actively involved in the Abolition Movement and the Clapham Sect, I often find myself thinking about the social dynamics of change and how movements and coalitions grow and evolve. History teaches us that really significant change happens rarely from the top down but rather through constellations of leaders and organisations with similar worldviews but distinct resources and perspectives. At a time when it often feels like party politics lacks the imagination and courage to really answer the demands of the time, I find real hope in this idea that we can all organise ourselves and our institutions for change, and we all have a responsibility to build a stronger web of relationships to make that happen.

So, if like me you are longing for some positive change in this country, I think the Labour Party Conference did have some real signs of hope. But it’s not a passive hope that somehow having ‘the grownups in charge’ will by itself guarantee real progress. Instead, it’s a restless, active hope that says nothing will happen without us making it happen, and particularly joining the dots between people of goodwill to build something better than our status quo.