Making plans is such an ordinary activity that we can forget what it assumes. You arrange to see someone next week because you expect there to be a next week in which the arrangement matters. Much of what we call taking responsibility for our lives depends on conditions we did not create and cannot secure alone.
Radio Dabanga reports that a rights activist has identified a ceasefire as the foremost priority for Sudan’s women. That is an attributed assessment, and it cannot stand for every woman’s wishes. Yet it deserves attention on its own terms: stopping the fighting is being placed ahead of other needs.
There is a temptation, when thinking about people living through war, to admire their resilience and leave the thought there. Admiration costs us very little. It can also allow an intolerable situation to become strangely acceptable, provided the people enduring it continue to demonstrate sufficient courage.
The capacity to endure says nothing about how much anyone should be required to bear.
A ceasefire, of course, cannot settle every question. An end to immediate violence does not by itself establish justice or resolve the conditions that produced a conflict. Those are serious objections to treating a pause in fighting as a complete answer. They are much weaker objections to making it an urgent priority. People should not have to wait for a satisfactory solution to every political problem before their immediate safety counts.
This matters to how we understand responsibility, including in less extreme circumstances. We regularly ask what people are doing to improve their lives. We are less consistent about asking whether they have enough security to make a choice that can hold until tomorrow. Without that question, the language of personal responsibility can become a way of overlooking what is being done to someone.
For those following Sudan from a distance, there is at least a discipline available: listen to the stated priority before replacing it with a more elaborate account of what people ought to want. Keep the immediate demand in view even when the wider argument remains unresolved.
An ordinary tomorrow may sound like a modest ambition. Anyone free to assume one should be careful about deciding it is insufficient.