The agonizing pain of injustice

This morning I woke up with a sore body, feeling the physical manifestations of the myriad injustices I have seen and felt around me over the last few days. I am trying so hard to release these things because, in truth, none of them directly impacts me. But I just cannot do that. I am bearing the weight of the poor decisions of other. I am feeling the pain of grief. I am carrying the sorrow of discrimination. 

This has always been an issue for me. I am an emotional being, deeply empathic. I love this about myself because I am relational person. I thrive through spending time with other people. But it is a two-edged sword. It leads to the feelings I am dealing with this morning.

I don’t talk much about heaven and hell or good and evil. I think there is a great deal of murkiness on these topics that I’m not particularly willing to discuss in open forum. I will, however, say this: to me, the worst evil in this world exists when someone lords his or her privilege over someone else. This problem exists on a macro and micro level. Dictators rise from places of religious, social, and racial privilege. But it can be as simple as a rich and powerful man showing disrespect to a subordinate, a lack of compassion toward someone in need simply because it’s not your problem.

Some days I find it hard to pull myself out of bed, overcome by the injustices in our world. I feel so small in the face of these offenses. I feel so powerless.

This is, perhaps, not the normal pattern of my writing. I try very hard not to present a problem without a solution, or at least a direction toward a solution. I do my best not to whine or complain here. But today this is all I have. I wish I did not feel the way I feel about the world. I wish I could live my life oblivious to the suffering and injustice in our world. And, if those things cannot be true, I wish there was something I could actually do to change these things.

But instead, I sit in a cubicle. I watch injustice around me and remain silent. Because when you’re an adult there are things to consider like bills and loan payments and rent. You cannot drop everything and run out into the world to try and right the wrongs you see. You cannot take a business degree and be taken seriously as a minister, unless you attend seminary first. You cannot take experience in retail and advertising and marketing and be ordained to ministry.

It is hard to feel the pain in the world but to be unable to comfort those experiencing it. What am I doing here? Is this really the direction of my life? Somehow I end up having this kind of existential crisis every couple of years. And, invariably, it will end the same way. I will talk myself down and continue on. 

But what if…what if I didn’t? I’m living for the day when I can answer that question with action.