What we choose to feed
Because ultimately, it is a choice. If we're aware and available enough to make it.
I was doomscrolling in bed one day.
I know, I know, not the healthiest thing but hey, I’m only human.
I saw a video directly from people in impacted, war-torn areas. Swipe. Then, I saw a cute couple playing the latest trending game. Swipe. Then, a family being torn apart with onlookers trying to stop it. Swipe. A baby with the cutest laugh.
Swipe.
The whiplash was jarring.
It’s hard to keep track of how many wars are taking place. How much money is being spent around the world with the intention to kill. How much blood is being spilled so that greedy companies and politicians can make more money just to spill more oil into our oceans.
It’s horrendous.
Millions of people are suffering. Dealing with diseases. Living in unlivable conditions. Wars don’t make menstruation stop. Women are having to endure the symptoms of their menstrual cycle while staying as clean as possible to avoid infection and getting blood everywhere and still showing up for those around them. Men are being stripped of their roles as protectors, forced to witness their helplessness in the face of systems built to keep them down. Children are witnessing horrors no human at any age ever should. Their childhoods are stripped away every second they’re forced to live with fear in their body.
Meanwhile, I’m falling in love. I have friends going through treatment to get pregnant. Others are celebrating their first home purchase. Excited to get a job. Launching a business. Raising a child. Getting upset over something small (but very real), like stubbing a toe. Or getting overwhelmed as an introvert with yet another social outing that feels like an obligation.
These two truths are increasingly difficult to carry at the same time. How dare I be overwhelmed by safe, celebratory social outings when people don’t have access to water to wash themselves, let alone drink? How dare I celebrate a win when I know my taxpayer dollars are being used by a government that I never supported to kill schoolgirls en masse?
I have the simple privilege (which really, should be a right) of having a safe place to rest. That alone makes me feel guilt. Never mind the many other privileges like access to food, clean water, and a space to simply be.
I didn’t do anything to deserve the things I have. Yet, people living in countries being attacked and being torn apart from their families didn’t do anything to deserve the experiences they’re being forced to live through either.
We all have dreams. We all want to love and be loved. We all want to live in a place that feels safe. To create. To be.
I felt the guilt creep up from my toes all the way to the crown of my head. It consumed me. I stopped scrolling and let myself feel the guilt. I indulged in it. Let it make me feel like a horrible human just for existing.
After what felt like way too long, I realized that in the process of letting my guilt consume me, all my thoughts were about me. How bad *I* felt. How horrible *I* was.
The truth is, that the more I get caught up in my guilt, the less available I am to the world.
Indulging in guilt makes the suffering of others about us and our own conscience. It’s a quiet form of self-centering that interrupts our natural flow and stalls our ability to move. And ultimately, guilt does nothing to help anyone, including ourselves.
That realization was sobering. I was making it about me. And in that crowded room of self-reproach, there was no space left for the people I was actually grieving.
Releasing guilt is harder some days than others, often dependent on my news intake. But on the days I don’t feed my guilt, I choose to feed my curiosity.
My privilege isn’t a reason to hide, it’s actually the very thing that provides me the safety to look, listen, and act. I educate myself, not to feel “informed” but to be ready. I donate, I research, and I stay aware so that if or when the time comes to speak up, I have a voice that is grounded in something more than my own discomfort.
Guilt keeps us stuck and centers us and our story. Curiosity is a bridge.
It’s not about me. It’s about being available to the people facing daily injustices, ensuring that while I have the privilege of a safe place to rest, I don’t use it as a place to fall asleep.