Some time last year I got a call from the Xarabank team, inviting me to be part of the panel on their Friday night programme. I gulped in response. Before I got the chance to put a word in, I was told by the very cheery Xarabank-team man that I wouldn’t need to worry because I wouldn’t be on my own and that I would be part of a “very interesting panel”.

I don’t remember exactly who the panel people were but I vaguely recall that it was going to be some Chinese masseuse who wanted to become a cloister nun, an obese man who broke the Guinness record for eating the most sausages but now wanted to go to Marion’s, a man who could not step outside without wearing sunglasses on top of his head even at night and an ex-weed addict who put up a reggae version of The Passion of the Christ.

“And you will all be discussing lots of different topics,” he said, sounding very much like he wanted to woo-hoo and high-five me through the phone wires.

A sweat bead trickled down my temples and my voice turned horribly squeaky. “I’m not good at panels,” I said in an ear-aching, high-octave pitch. Luckily, it was not a face-to-face interaction, as I even got a spit bubble – it tends to pop up when I’m anxious (and takes an eternity to burst away). I declined politely, explaining that viewers would think I was the voiceless woman with a phobia of television studios waiting for Alan Bates to cure me.

I was thinking of these Xarabank panels last week. They are very telling about the way we have become. Of course, I have nothing against the Chinese masseuse who wanted to become a cloister nun, the obese man who broke the Guinness record for eating the most sausages but now wanted to go to Marion’s, the man who could not step outside without wearing sunglasses on top of his head even at night and the ex-weed addict who put up a reggae version of The Passion of the Christ.

But – if I may squeak my opinion here – it seems that nationwise we’re at a very Daily Mail stage of expressing ourselves: if life has dealt you some sort of blow, then go ahead and flaunt your vulnerability.

We are one society and we cannot risk promoting the ugly victim mentality and unconsciously stick labels on people branding them with their very own lack of abilities

In fact, if you think about it: what are the two most popular words in the Maltese language? Apart from swear words, that is. A straw poll among my friends – who by now are so used to being straw-polled that they give me an answer even before I ask the question – revealed that the two words are: ‘jaħasra’ and ‘miskin/a’.

“Those were the first two words I picked up, if you don’t count the fillers ‘mela’ and ‘ejja’,” said one friend who has lived in Malta for five years. We are especially apt at en mass pity; in crowds (such as a live television audiences) you can hear the noise of the cheeks being sucked in and the lips puckered in the shape of an ‘O’ and a one big whisper of ‘ssra’ and ‘sskina’.

There have been, over the past years, some plus points: we no longer talk of people ‘inqas ixxurtjati minna’ or of ‘anġli fuq l-art’ and other such stuff. And children are being nurtured into being more inclusive: because disabilities are not longer hidden, they no longer gawp at them.

But lately I have been feeling the words ‘batut’ ‘emarginat’ ‘vulnerabbli’ are featuring too much in our daily language, in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ sort of way. If you’re an elderly, an orphan, a social case, come from a broken family, you’re poor, you’re obese, you’re too thin, then you tick the box of the ‘batut’. Which means you can go on a Xarabank panel and you get to be lauded by politicians and they’ll want to take a photo with you. We lost all sense of ‘chin up and get on with it’; instead, it’s all very much ‘woe, look at poor me’.

I know there are situations in life where you just want to curl up and bemoan your fate, but at the risk of sounding cold and heartless, I believe that promoting self-pity should be the last thing we resort to.

I write this ahead of the new president’s ceremony on Friday. Judging by the programme of events, it will be full of ‘vulnerable people’ waiting to wave her off at strategic points all over Malta.

We have to be supremely careful: vulnerable people should not overtly be made to feel special – or worse even – paraded about just to show how much we care for them. We are one society and we cannot risk promoting the ugly victim mentality and unconsciously stick labels on people branding them with their very own lack of abilities.

Otherwise we risk having to have Xarabank on a daily basis, to fit all the people needing to be on the panel.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti