Dividing Ourselves

‘I think we are finally at a place where we can accept the truth that no one escapes from oppression, not one of us. Everyone is deeply wounded.’ Rev. angel Kyodo williams

Everyone is deeply wounded by the collective trauma of racism. No matter your part or your role, no matter who you ancestors were, we are all woven together by the horrors of our past. This trauma, like all trauma, lives on in the present—haunting our every moment and manifesting in all our actions and institutions.

Slavery, lynching, mass genocide and violence are part of our American heritage. They stand alongside visions of freedom and righteous struggle—people of all backgrounds who have worked tirelessly—who have given their lives to fight against bigotry and cruelty. But until we can collectively acknowledge the fullness of what has happened and how it continues, none of us are free.

The violence and inhumanity of our American history are a bitter pill to swallow for a country that has prided itself in its exceptionalism and its self-image as a beacon of shining light. Just like individuals, countries create images of themselves and then defend these images as if they were the truth. If I imagine myself as a kind and sensitive person, I will unconsciously do my best to deny any actions or accusations that indicate otherwise. We all erect walls of the self-protection to defend our illusory self-image and to keep us safe from all that we would rather not see.

These fabricated self-images are necessary and helpful and only a problem if we hold them as true and unchanging. Then we spend our time defending a picture of who we think we are rather than being able to look around and respond to what is actually present, both within us and outside of us.

We all know people who seem particularly oblivious to the world around them. Regardless of what they are confronted with, they tell the same story about what is happening: ‘I never get a break.’ ‘Everyone always turns against me.’ ‘Why do people blame me for things that are not my fault?” ‘Why am I so broken?’ ‘Why don’t people see how kind I am?’ ‘Why does this always happen to me?’

These stories, even the negative ones, protect us from information that might be dissonant to the image we have created. Even when these self-images no longer serve us, they can have a fierce hold on us—unless we actively work to acknowledge our self-centeredness and open to that which is disturbing and unknown, we will be forever held within our own self-deception. This is part of the woundedness that Rev. angel Kyodo williams speaks of above.

Of course ‘those people’ are always, in some way, us. Though each one of us lives in a bubble of imagined exceptionalism, this is simply part of what makes us all fully human. Each one of us contains the full range of grace and pathology. Each one of us has the capacity for acts of courage and acts of cowardice – acts of mercy and acts of cruelty. When we create groups and classes of people, then start calling them names, it is a sure sign that we have divided ourselves against ourselves.

This self-splitting happens at every level. I can wonder why my partner is so self-centered and mindless while I am so virtuous and attentive. I can wonder why Republicans are the bad things and the Democrats are the good things. I can think New Zealand’s political leader is wonderful and our current leader is horrible.

There are different positions and roles. Everyone is not equal. Some actions hurt others and some are more helpful. But we’re all entangled together.

In the cycle of abuse, everyone suffers the loss of their humanity. Breaking out of the patterns of terrible woundness require all of us to engage—to look at inconvenient and outrageous truths about ourselves, our history and the hidden realities of the country in which we all live.

Personal Practice – How do you divide the world? Think of three qualities that most describe who you are. Now think of three qualities that describe who you are not. Write them down. Take the list of the three things you are not and consider how, sometimes, you are these things too. Now pick one of the things you are not and consider how it might serve you to incorporate some of this quality into your life.