Injustice and Wounding

Life isn’t fair.

No big surprise…but somehow when life shows us how unfair it is…it’s still something to wrap one’s head around it.

This is my bumper’s new look:

It happened last week…I ran errands, stopped here and there, spent some time in various places…and at the last stop of the night, when I walked up to get in the car…the bumper had a huge hole in it.

Don’t know when it happened, but I do know a few things:

1. I was not in the vehicle when it was hit
2. It was not moving when it was hit
3. Someone else hit it when I wasn’t around
4. Whoever hit it did not leave their name or address

So…I called MPI and in addition to having to pay the deductible for damage for an accident I had nothing to do with, I have to go to MPI to get it looked at, and then make an appointment to get the bumper replaced, and then get it fixed, and manage for the day without my vehicle while it’s getting repaired.

Now, I recognize that none of these things are big deals…but it’s a hassle and an inconvenience. I have enough to do without taking care of messes I didn’t create.

It seems so unnecessary.

I wish the person responsible would pay the deductible.

I wish someone would say sorry to me.

It’s not fair.

I might be tempted to have a little pity party for myself, but the life I have doesn’t lend itself well to raging at the injustice of a parking lot hit and run:

• I have heard stories regularly for the last 2 months of student Occupational Therapists working at Siloam Mission…many homeless people are in that state because of injustice in their families, in “the system” that make it insurmountably difficult to emerge from that situation
• I recently was in a third world country watching skinny horses pull rickety carts past equally skinny goats and oxen. The people, while friendly, avoided talking about themselves and their lives…and when I would ask about them directly about their lives, their eye contact became poor, and they gave vague responses about difficult economic times.
• I work with people who tell me stories, or hint at stories of injustice, marginalization, minimization, inequities, intolerance, and abuse that scream pain. Some stories I’ve heard, some are silently witnessed as unspeakably awful.

On their behalf, I feel anger and betrayal and frustration at how very very unfair life has been for them…and I haven’t experienced their story firsthand, as they have had to experience.

Injustice can sow seeds of bitterness and resentment.

It’s hard when life isn’t fair…and another person has created a situation of injustice. Bitterness can so easily take over…despite how really it so much hurts the person experiencing it.

I saw a brief movie clip the other day, in which Nicole Kidman, as a character in The Interpreter said:

Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can’t find anyone else. But in Africa, in Matobo, the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call the Drowning Man Trial. There’s an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He’s taken out on the water and he’s dropped. He’s bound so that he can’t swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they’ll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn’t always just… that very act can take away their sorrow.
…vengeance is a lazy form of grief

I find myself thinking about this the last few days…mulling over the situation, and pondering about injustice, and bitterness, and grief, and unfairness.

No easy answers, and counsellors certainly can’t take away what “is”. I am regular listener to painful stories of injustice. There isn’t a way to correct injustice in session, but there is a chance to witness it, give it a voice, and mull over how much power it will have over a person’s life…but no easy answers.

None.