There are egregious things happening every day, but they are not outraging in the same way. The outrage has become a permanent thing, there is no surge of outrage renewed. This is, unexpectedly, freeing, because it is transformative — channeling outrage into purpose without the constant emotional energy bleed.

This is not the same thing as apathy. It is the power of empathy.

The outrage machine feeds on a constant diet of “can you believe what these evil lunatics just did?” The perpetrators are centered, their actions consume our collective lifeblood. But the truth is the underlying cruelty and malice are a constant – the specific manner in which it is manifest at any given moment is all that changes. The illusion of there always being some new thing against which to rage is by design.

But I have learned to decenter the perpetrators of hate, cruelty, and banal malice. They have become little more than a backdrop of lies against which I can center the beauty of the communities they target.

The work shifts from an exhausting moral disbelief to an enriching moral alignment. At the day of reckoning I will celebrate with unbridled enthusiasm to be sure. But in the meantime I am going to resist by using my space to hold up voices that have been silenced, muted, discarded.

#AmericanReflections