There are times when a sense of empowerment, ignorance and even privilege is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to lose perspective of the predicaments and ordeals other people are going through. It is difficult to self-extricate from engrained learned patterns, as if to jump off the wagon of long-standing behaviors and leave one’s comfort zone. For me personally, it’s as if life’s paradoxical consequences of freewill, responsibility, agency, morality and decency always came back to bite me in the butt. Recently, I’ve been pondering the thought that not everybody is an activist or an intellectual, let alone a dissident, but the fact of the matter is that very few people are brave enough to challenge the Status Quo in favor of more transparent and accurate ways to see and represent the world. It seems that those with enough guts to risk it all and leap into the void are by all accounts at their wits end. Their thirst for justice, fair representation, change of paradigm and so on, is because they’re oppressed in some way. Meanwhile economic powers and the media seem more invested than ever in keeping us locked down in the entrenchments of our small screens and modern-day distractions. Ironically, we respond in kind by opting for the convenience of keeping our heads dipped in the sand. We would rather walk the walk wearing our blinders on. Here’s an example of how this dilemma unfolded lately in a random day in my life.  

I’m washing the dishes on a Saturday morning after an evening of old French New Wave movies and homemade Vietnamese fried rolls – the food was a mild success, but the whole experience was unwinding and delightful. The radio is on, I am listening to a show on National airwaves. It caters the news with an unexpected twist. The subject matter: the ongoing war in the Middle East. The voice of a man comes on as he is being interviewed from Rafah about his first-hand experience of the chaos and destruction in Gaza. A father and a husband, the man is an aid worker who has been, along with millions, encroached to the southernmost city of Gaza, as Israel’s bulldozing of the region continues pushing south. He and his family have been forced to leave everything behind back in the north of their country. Nobody is waiting for these people back home. In fact, there is no home to return to. The exhaustion, resignation and despair in the voice of the poor man seeps through the speaker.  

The interview is still going on in the background, but I’m done with the dishes What I am doing now is beat two eggs in a bowl. My whole apartment is bubbling up with the fragrance of coffee freshly brewed and the smoky notes of a piece of bread in the toaster; chorizo and onions are caramelizing in a pan on the stovetop waiting for the beaten eggs to be poured in a sizzling tapestry of aromas; but something has shifted inside of me. A sudden discomfort, like a glitch in the depths of my consciousness. 

As the golden substance oozes onto the pan, a mental rush is taking place upstairs making me somewhat lightheaded. My headspace is regrouping, and a tinge of anxiety pokes me lightly. I grab the pan handle and season with salt and pepper the scrambled eggs. I am drooling, eagerly anticipating a small feast. And despite the perfect concoction laying in front of my face, ready to be taken in and consumed by all my senses, I stop for a moment and ponder the relative weight of being here and now. A sudden notion. A certainty. A feeling of safety right here and right now embraces me in a blanket of warmth and reassurance –I’m home, I am well –, I think to myself. Once the emotions get identified and labelled, the anxiety walks out.  

There is a crunch, and then a squeeze in my gut which almost succeed in breaking the surface tension of my epiphany when I realize that, as if by means of quantum entanglement, somewhere else in the world, at the same time as this intellectual exercise is taking place inside of my head, while standing in my kitchen, plating an omelet and getting ready to scarf it down, thousands upon thousands of people like you and me are holding the shorter end of the stick. It sickens me. The screaming questions inside of my head become louder and louder: “How can I help? Is there anything I can do? Where do I start?”