Choices

Life is all about making choices, and they come in varying degrees of significance. Some are as minuscule as deciding between two or two and a half teaspoons of sugar, and others are whether your current partner is someone whom you would want around at your lowest point or not. No one has all the answers and anyone who claims to is not someone you should take seriously. We are freestyling this life thing, but we all need some sort of method to our madness. A process of elimination to guide us when we feel lost and uncertain. A process that we can rely on so that whatever the outcome, we can live with it.  

I have made many choices in my life and said a lot of things, I am not proud of some and I am ashamed of others. I find that with decisions, it is often best to choose the option that would cause the least amount of harm if it were the wrong one. If people were discussing the choice you are making in 50 years’ time, could someone defend you in good conscience without playing the devil's advocate? 

Do you want to be remembered for potentially protecting someone that did not need protection or turning your back on a vulnerable person because their recounting of a traumatic experience was a little too tenuous for your liking? Would it be easier to try and reconnect with someone whom you distanced yourself from after they were accused of a morally reprehensible crime as opposed to reconnecting with someone who you walked away from after they came forward about being violated and you did not find them victim-like or victim worthy?

History will remember you and no one is as unforgiving as her. It is better to be a sensitive social justice warrior than a safe space for perpetrators. The Germans who let their Jewish neighbours be dragged away are judged with the same scorn as the ones who did the dragging. Your silence is deafening, and everyone can hear you loud and clear. 

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere” – Elie Wiesel 

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