Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
I woke up a few days ago. But when I got out of bed, I had a shot of pain. Putting weight on my right foot hurt a lot. I could barely step without wincing.
I thought that this might be morning stiffness. Reality had other ideas. Two days later, I’m sitting with an ice pack. I’m currently doing my best to move as little as possible.
What caused this grand injury? I’m not actually really sure.
The night before, I did a dance class and walked around without problem. Before going to bed, I had zero pains.
I must have somehow rolled my ankle while sleeping. I went to a festival last weekend where I walked around a lot, so I suppose my tendons were extra susceptible to injury.
I’m feeling quite bitter about this. I feel like I’ve done nothing to really provoke such an injury.
In the past, I’ve rolled my ankle because I wasn’t paying attention. At least then I had someone or something to blame.
One weird quirk about the human experience is dealing with unfairness. There is an innate sense of justice within us that sparks when something unfair takes place.
I don’t really know what hurt my ankle, but I’ve got little choice but to deal with it. There’s little to do other than heal.
I can try to put a positive spin on it too – this happened when I’m at home, and whilst I may have to cancel a few things, it’s taken place at a relatively convenient time. If this happened a week ago, I’d be stuck in a rented tent, unable to enjoy a festival I travelled 10 hours to get to.
The reality is that there is a duality to unfairness. Looking at it more broadly, I’ve suffered from extra levels of discrimination because of how I sound and look. These are important things for me to recognise and to make peace with. If nothing else, it helps me navigate the realities of my life more effectively.
And yet, there are far more unfair things happening in the world right now. If I were born in Gaza, I would be starving – assuming I was still alive. There is a genocide taking place. The people living there are powerless to do anything about it. This is about as unfair as it gets. Meanwhile, people in places of power would rather ignore these realities, rather than doing what is right.
Some people get so caught up in the unfairness of others that they choose to minimise their own. Because what is happening to them is less intense than the worst atrocities of the world, they feel selfish for ever raising an issue. These folk, whilst well-meaning, are the ones that often get walked over. If you are not able to stand up for yourself, you are allowing other people to take your power. Chances are that these people will end up using such power to cause evermore harm.
Other people choose to see their own experience of unfairnesses as the worst thing in the world. Blinded by their emotions, they fail to see anything outside of their plight as worthy of attention. I’ve worked in many activist spaces, and this is something I often have seen. There is little regard for anything else apart from their cause. Such folk can get so single-minded that they sadly end up emulating the problematic behaviour that they fight so passionately against. It’s why many NGOs I’ve seen end up exploiting their own workforce.
Then some people prefer to ignore that unfairness exists. By simply pretending that the world is perfect, it is far easier to ignore the injustice. It can then absolve us from responsibility, because to us, the system works. It’s easier to say that people who are suffering do so because they somehow deserve it. Such an approach is devoid of reality. It is both inhumane, and it also means living in a delusion. It is impossible to be truly happy if one is ignoring the hard facts of life.
To exist in this word, we need to become comfortable with the fact that unfairness exists. It’s how we deal with it that allows us to flourish.