We must love the people more than we hate the systems oppressing us
How do we find happiness in an aching, inequitable world?
Maybe this is a ludicrous thing to say— but I’ve always felt immensely guilty for living, for experiencing even the smallest amount of joy. Why do I get to live while so many people are massacred? Why do I get to have a full plate of food while millions in my communities are starving? Why should I be happy, even for a fleeting moment, in a world with so much pain & suffering?
Today, I’ll share some realizations about questions I’ve been struggling to answer my whole life, more so in the last 10 months witnessing the intensification of the genocide in Palestine – “How do we live in a fundamentally inequitable world? How can we find happiness amidst all this suffering?”
P.S. You can now sign up for this months Heal in Community session here!
Paid subscribers: Your 100% discount code is at the bottom of this piece!
I added time stamps to each section because I wrote this over the course of a few days.
— August 1, 9:30 AM Indian Standard Time
I’m sitting on the porch of my father’s ancestral home in our island village, Bengre, on the Malabar Coast of South India. The western ghats, a tropical forest mountain range, and the rivers that flow down from them to our right. The Indian Ocean/ Arabian Sea to our left. I see the river and the ocean collide into a turbulent yet serene estuary in front of me.
For a snapshot, I wrote this piece when I was here back in February 2023 (it had been 8 years since I’d been back at the time):
Capitalism overwhelms our senses while also insulating us from the connection we need
Visiting the mother-land is always equal parts rejuvenating/ grounding & devastating/ painful. It’s a reminder of everything I ran from & for what? It’s a visceral reminder of all the community struggles, responsibilities, duties that I should have stayed behind & fought for instead of being deceived by these systems to chase safety in the heart of the empire.
It’s monsoon season, something I haven’t been here for in over 2 decades. Instead, I’ve been sleeping to spotify monsoon rain sound playlists over the years.
The heavenly, unrelenting rain has been pouring down all day. I’m awestruck & moved to tears because I see the world we’re fighting for in these lush forests. Everyone knows everyone in our village & it is nearly impossible for me to self-isolate on the island because people inherently care about & rely on each other— someone always comes looking for me with a bowl of fruit or chai. This is it, the whole “deal”, this is god & mother, this is love. It’s so easy for me to lose sight of what we’re fighting for sometimes when I’m in the so-called USA.
I think many people in the West “go on” with their lives, conforming to the status quo, partly because these empires hide their carnage well. You can look away if you want to. At the same time, the individualistic, colonial default infrastructure of western society prevents people from seeing pieces of the liberated future we’re building in community.
Here, in the global south, it is nearly impossible for me to look away from the poverty, immense pain, misery & suffering the most marginalized bear. It is everywhere. At the same time, collectivism & our vibrant maximalist, resilient & joyful cultures are also everywhere. It is… a lot to take in at once. Our streets are alive. Here, you cannot deny that the world is horrifying AND breathtakingly beautiful.
I was pretty heartbroken when I arrived on the island. Bengre has changed in many ways- more commercialization, more tourists & “vacation homestays” popping up, capitalism encroaching on & trying to profit off of the sacred. The state is trying to rename it “Delta Beach” to attract even more “eat, pray, love” tourists. Piles of plastic trash on the beach courtesy of nameless visitors, our desperate hungry birds pecking away now that some of the trees that sustained them have been cut down. Much of the trash washes into the ocean during high tides, then hurting our fish, coral reefs & all marine life.
I can sense that capitalism’s increasing grip on the island has started to fragment relationships. This is a community created over 100s of years, generations of people caring & supporting each other’s day-to-day survival. However, now more youth have left the village for the city or even overseas for easier access to money. It has made families less interdependent & thereby more alienated & separate. But who am I to comment on such issues? A foreigner in my own motherland who left falling for the lies of the empires that plundered & pillaged our lands. It hurts. I’m angry, often in a constant state of grieving & mourning, unsure if there’s any point to me writing or doing this work.
These questions remain— How do we live in a fundamentally inequitable world? How can we find happiness amidst all this suffering? Do we deserve joy in an aching world?
I think to effectively play our role in the fight for collective liberation, we need unrelenting hope which comes from experiencing just as much joy as it comes from pain. To be hopeful is to be brave against all odds. Steadfast faith is rooted in the things we’re fighting for, not what we’re fighting against.
There’s some pictures I keep coming back to—the images of Palestinians in Gaza on Eid or at Jummuah (Friday prayer) praying in the concrete remnants where the mosque once stood; the image of the Palestinian mother bathing her young sons in a bath tub amidst the rubble & ashes; the images of families breaking fast in Ramadan in the rubble in front of their house that was bombed; the children doing dabke on the playground of the school turned into a refugee shelter or the children laughing in amusement at the circus troop trying to distract them from the sound of drones overhead & nearing missile strikes. There is genuine happiness in the backdrop of unfathomable devastation & suffering.
— August 2, 6 PM ish Indian Standard Time
I’m writing this on my last night in India. I went out and prayed in front of the ocean during low tide— my way of saying goodbye. I’m always afraid that it may be the last time or that I’ll return even more of a stranger. Today, the monsoon had retreated for a bit and rays of sunlight shone through patches in the gloomy clouds. I’m in awe & also deeply sad. I just sat on the sand for a few mins sobbing.
I don’t think I have adequate words to describe the pain, grief, shame, hope, yearning, and immense guilt I feel for leaving… again. I still don’t know what “home” means. I don’t know what I can do to earn that sense of belonging but I’m trying. All I know is that I feel extremely guilty for existing at all in a world where so many have their lives desecrated or brutally snatched away. It hurts.
I never feel like I’m doing enough in our struggle for collective liberation. But part of that feeling stems from a heightened sense of self-importance? I know it’s on us, not just on me. I know even the land is fighting back with all it has. So maybe this icky, aching feeling is not precisely guilt as much as it is LOVE? I don’t think I’m meant to escape this feeling of “not doing enough”— not in an aching, inequitable world. I think love for the land & the people to be free hurts just as much as it gives us a reason to live. I think love for our eventual freedom is a deep, fervent, yearning we have for the planet to exist with dignity, with an iota of ease or safety— something that colonialism/ capitalism deprives it of. And we cannot stop hurting, pushing, wanting, hoping, fighting… until that freedom is here.
Im sure I’ll feel this way even when my bones have decayed into the soil, hopefully making it more fertile for more life to grow. Whether in my lifetime or in the next generations, I know that this ocean & by extension everything that it is connected to, from me to you, will be free. And maybe both this aching, eternal guilt AND moments of joy or relief in community are keeping us tethered & accountable to the world we’re fighting for.
I said my guilt-ridden bye to the Indian ocean in tears right before I left for the airport. I think all the pain I felt was also me saying “I love you” to the land & the people.
Here’s some realizations I’ve had on things we can do in our day-to-day life to find dignified moments of joy that aren’t escapist or devoid of suffering:
Happiness must be decolonized & defined thru a collectivist lens
What is happiness and how do we experience it? The concept has been distorted by capitalist, colonial empires who’ve taught us to see happiness as a trophy that can be “achieved” with individual, self-centered actions. Conformity & assimilation under existing (violent) systems is framed as the path to happiness.
In our community, people, mostly our elders, see happiness as a communal experience, a feeling that starts & ends in the collective, that which cannot be generated or felt alone. In contrast, the myth of “happiness” sold to us by colonialism is bliss in the absence of suffering & struggle, an elevated state achieved by individuals who are thriving above the pain of the world, unfettered/ unaffected/ unhindered by it. “Happiness” under capitalism is individual pleasure derived from achieving milestones, success, wealth and accessed via consumption & materialism. This sort of “happiness” doesn’t exist, it is merely a lie sold to exploited subjects to secure their obedience.
Happiness are moments of serenity, beauty, joy & care accessed only in community, in the struggle, alongside suffering. Running from the struggle means running from happiness & joy.
We need anchors
To live, we need anchors, something to root into— fragments of the things we’re fighting for turned into consistent rituals that will provide us with a firm foundation & stability under fundamentally unstable, unpredictable, brutal systems. Colonial psychology’s approach to “healing” is oversimplified & reductive because it frames healing as a final state of bliss, devoid of & beyond trauma. Except, trauma is all around us & we will be continually traumatized so long as we exist in the matrix we’re trying to dismantle.
There is no perfect “healed” state & aspiring to it will drain us of life. Rather—how do we anchor into the beautiful things we’re fighting for so we’re not consumed by all that we’re fighting against?
Potential journaling prompt, community discussion starter:
What are we fighting against? What are we fighting for? Be as specific as possible. What about this world are you fighting to protect, sustain & preserve? How do the things you’re fighting for show up in your day-to-day life? For example, when I see my grandma slowly cooking an ancestral dish with a recipe passed down through countless generations, I see a piece of the world I’m fighting for. When I sat on our porch in India, under the monsoon, watching the kids run home from school, laughing with unrestrained joy, that is something I want more off. I want our children to live… with dignity do they can experience more unrestrained bliss.
What are you fighting to build when you say “a better world”? What does that better world look like in practice? What would people be doing in a better, more equitable, more just, free-er world? What aspects of that are already here in this world? What forms of suffering, inequity & injustice are we trying to dismantle? What forms of joy, happiness, & beauty are we trying to preserve or build?
I think many of us are able to answer questions about what we’re trying to tear down with more ease than the questions about what we’re building. So focus more on the questions that leave you speechless or stumped. Instead of answering in vague abstract notions, answer in tangible specifics.
Communal rituals as anchors—what does living with love for the people mean in practice in our day-to-day?
It’s pretty incredible that across time & space, communities always concoct rituals that aim to keep the beautiful, the sacred & the joyful at the forefront of their existence, an act of resistance in itself. We create & sustain maximalist diverse cultures full of life over & over again.
Another possible prompt to think about that can shift focus:
What do you hate about the society you’re forced to live in? Be specific, use your 5 senses to describe it. What do you love about the world as it currently exists? What about the world moves you to tears & motivates you to fight?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Cosmic Anarchy to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.