Member-only story
Navigating The Privilege-Guilt-Denial Cycle: How To Balance It All Without Going (Totally) Crazy
How do you navigate your privilege? Hint: it’s not by hand-wringing or giving away your worldly possessions.
Guilt is the ambient noise of American culture.
Humming away in the background of our lives like really low-quality elevator music, it ferments inside of our unconscious at all hours — as a result, most of us have begun to feel more than a little…on edge.
Maybe this emerges as anxiety, or perhaps it bursts free as embarrassing levels of defensiveness. It can show up as a pervasive sense of uncertainty, swinging between these two extremes as your mind attempts to protect itself from painful, guilty feelings. This is natural.
But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy. It’s not.
So, what are we to do, those of us who occupy one or more spheres of privilege and who have found ourselves at a loss about how to approach this fact?
In my ongoing experience, the answer begins with looking back into the repressive shadows of our nation’s history.
Folks, it’s time for my favorite game: Let’s Blame the Puritans.
