Thoughts without prayers.
It’s easy to admire survivors as heroes, but if you only want the heroic story , a perspective of resilience, your personal definition of strength and ignore the suffering, then you’re not really seeing them as human. Their survival matters, but so does their pain. Stop trying to look away.
I see this a lot among Muslims. They laugh as I tell them about the jokes I share with Palestinians for instance. The minute I shift the discourse to their pain and how they are going to die and get erased, they step out emotionally. They don't want to face the reality. They want to romanticize and see the "positive" side of things. That is incredibly destructive and irritating.
Face reality for what is.
Over the years I had to deal with the same when talking about my background. It is incredibly unjust to prioritize getting rid of your own discomfort towards the imperfections of existence by creating narratives.. prioritize them over my need to own the truth of my past , raw, cruel, REAL.
It is one thing to escape it when it comes to your own traumatic experiences, another to use that same coping strategy over and over again to look away and neglect whatever obligations you feel towards other people's suffering.
And it is tiring. It is absolutely tiring having to deal with the cognitive dissonance involved in these interactions.
I see this a lot among Muslims. They laugh as I tell them about the jokes I share with Palestinians for instance. The minute I shift the discourse to their pain and how they are going to die and get erased, they step out emotionally. They don't want to face the reality. They want to romanticize and see the "positive" side of things. That is incredibly destructive and irritating.
Face reality for what is.
Over the years I had to deal with the same when talking about my background. It is incredibly unjust to prioritize getting rid of your own discomfort towards the imperfections of existence by creating narratives.. prioritize them over my need to own the truth of my past , raw, cruel, REAL.
It is one thing to escape it when it comes to your own traumatic experiences, another to use that same coping strategy over and over again to look away and neglect whatever obligations you feel towards other people's suffering.
And it is tiring. It is absolutely tiring having to deal with the cognitive dissonance involved in these interactions.
