Self-righteousness

The obvious microaggressions are easy to spot. The anger flares inside immediately and past similar incidents rise to the surface unbidden.

It’s painful but it’s clear cut.

It’s the subtler ones that eat at you, almost on a time delayed extended release. At first you’re annoyed but not that bothered. But then it slowly sinks in. It feels familiar but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You’re irked, but you’re also irked at yourself for being irked.

For me, it’s the gaslighting that is particularly exhausting - the second guessing of oneself that happens when someone else’s reality is both indisputable (as all realities are) yet so at odds with and harmful to your own.

Self-righteousness is a particular kind of poison, both in myself as well as others. Being convinced that we are right and others are wrong, that we are good and others are bad… it’s a kind of victimhood that leads to the abdication of agency. It is dehumanizing not just of others but of ourselves.

I do not have the inside track on the right way to do things.

This is something I remind myself on a daily basis.

Also on my mind is that we are not “the help”.

And that as a historically oppressed group, aligning with our oppressors to oppress others is not the way to freedom.

Attempted genocide is not the way to freedom.

It’s a set-up. It’s a false zero sum game.

I want to see us healing our trauma in solidarity to take down systems of oppression rather than allowing our trauma to be weaponized into perpetuating them.

Banner photo by Risto Kokkonen on Unsplash

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