It is easy for me to sit here in my chair and throw tomatoes at the religious groups who are presently burning each other in India. The difficult task is to understand why they are burning each other.
But here is the important thing — nothing justifies me to use the pronoun “they.” I myself am part of the problem. I myself am a perpetuator of this discrimination. I see someone wearing a headscarf or a yarmulke or a bindi, and preconceptions force themselves into my mind. These preconceptions, whether positive or not, are the problem.
So before I sit on an elevated throne amid a sea of wrongdoers, let me point my high-minded sense of morality at myself and realize that I am just as guilty of discrimination as the quarreling groups in India.
But should I hole myself up in a cave for being such a sinner? No — I must press on, and do my best to eliminate this sense of inequality in my mind, hour by hour, day by day, acknowledging all the while that I am imperfect, but relaxed in the fact that I am moving in the right direction.
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One Comment
This is such a good way of conceiving of things! Reading this made me really happy- I feel like a lot of people come to the realization that you explain without concluding in such an optimistic way, because they think they can’t do anything about the way they think.
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