Let me say upfront, before I get into the thrust of this, that my heart at this point in my life is in a very good place. I feel I am able to observe just about everything at present and hardly become reacted at all by that pent-up anxiety that exists in us all. From such a place I feel like I can offer something in the space of a person feeling perplexed about the injustices that have come against them.
Secondly, I need to say upfront that I validate that the injustice you suffered was reprehensible and should not have happened. The first thing we all need when we’ve been swallowed by injustice is to be believed.
As I observe life around me, I see many people estranged to the concept of peace. There just seems to be too much reactivity going on in our lives to be able to live INTO this blessed peace.
I’m sure you can see the connection between our anxiety and our lack of peace, even as we see injustices against us producing that anxiety.
If we take that just one step further, considering that peace is a cherished quality that so many of us truly covet, we may see that entering into the injustice is a poisoned chalice. It feels right to go there, but it leads us into a dead-end street with nowhere to go with our anger.
We feel we must enter into this injustice, because if we don’t nobody else will, and of course it feels good to be validated. But the more we enter into the injustice, the more we see with disbelief what has occurred, the more incredulous we get. Can you see that this isn’t helping, and indeed it is hindering our process of embarking upon peace?
So what do we do?
Simply ignore what’s happened and sweep it under the carpet?
Do we forgive and forget (as if that’s even possible)?
Do we let bygones be bygones?
Just as entering into the injustice tends to get us nowhere, just the same ignoring it and pretending it never happened also leads us nowhere.
So what do we do?
We keep coming back to the same infuriating question.
One thing I can suggest that we could do—and this applies to any situation in life that we cannot control and aren’t there so many of those!—is we see what WE can impact, and we STAY in that place. We stay in our stuff. For our own protection, and for the protection of others we care for and love. We stay OUT of things we cannot control.
We own our emotions and expectations, knowing that we cannot impact other people’s emotions or expectations. We can bear no responsibility for what others feel (or refuse to feel) or expect. We can only bear our own responsibility.
There is a freedom in this, even as we agree that we cannot change our circumstances. It is just another factor out of our control that we must accept.
I want to suggest that it’s a good thing that there are many things out of our control, because every single one of them we have no responsibility for. Can you see? The direct relationship between what we are responsible for and what we can control. The very moment we see this, is the great aha moment.
When I can observe others, who I cannot control, behave in ways that trouble me, I remind myself they are NOT my responsibility. Even with our children we can do the right thing in our coaching and discipline, but it’s up to them as individuals to accept our instruction, tweak or modify it, or even reject it. Our child’s choice is not our responsibility. We’re free from needing to control that which isn’t our responsibility, even though it hurts when our children go against what we believe is the wise way.
It’s just the same with a co-worker or a boss or anyone who has done anything against us.
It’s good to be an advocate for others, but we can only be good advocates when we have done our portion of healing. We cannot advocate effectively when we’re reactive.
One of the grand rules of life is making our opportunities to heal from those things that were unfairly done to us, including violence and trauma. Most of us will need to deal with a person or people having violated us and the trauma that consists of what that brings.
It wasn’t fair that it happened, but now it is our responsibility to heal from it. Sure, that’s another level of unfairness—true injustice—but unfortunately that’s life.
Those who accept the responsibility for changing what they can, will always make their advance upon peace.
Peace always comes at a premium and it requires the sacrifice of leaving well enough alone to live in it. What comes from peace, though, is the capacity to serve others who rely on us. We all have the responsibility to be reliable and as non-reactive as we can be for those close to us.
QUESTION: can you think of any situation where you have responsibility for a person, a thing, or situation, but little or no control? That’s an injustice difficult to resolve.
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