Investigative Selfism

As humans, we have the wonderful capacity to handle a paradox: things that seem opposite but are true at the same time.

The paradox I’m holding today is what you might be holding, too. It’s having my heart completely open and also witnessing the ones in power unleash death and destruction onto schools, hospitals, and universities in Iran.

There is no video in my post today, just the original format of this platform: a text. An essay that will hopefully resonate and remind you that you are very much not alone in this madness.

The madness I’m talking about is the joint efforts of the U.S. and Israel to destroy Iran. Not to destroy its military installations, not to diminish its military capabilities, but to destroy the country.

If someone asked you, how do you do that, you would probably – assuming the role of a complete psychopath for a second – describe exactly what we’re seeing: I would hit their power plants, I would destroy their bridges, I would target their hospitals, I would eliminate their capability to produce medicine for their people.

When you have no morals and no consideration for human life, to destroy a country, it seems, can be rather easy.

This is what we have allowed to happen. First, we collectively allowed that to be unleashed onto Gaza, warming each other, it’s not gonna stop there. Now, we’re seeing entire villages in Southern Lebanon being demolished, and over a million people being displaced. In Iran, it’s an indiscriminate killing, one textbook example of a war crime after another, accompanied by Trump’s derranged tweets that include threats, demands, cynicism, and an occasional mention of Jesus or Allah.

To witness it isn’t easy, even if we’re actively engaged in antiwar activities. As a political commentator whose work is both anticolonial and – the only combo that makes sense – antiwar, and as someone with academic and personal ties with Palestine, I can confirm that no level of madness in the past three years has been light. And that madness is only getting thicker; the violence is more encompassing; the inaction of our leaders more despicable; and so on (add your own mix to this salad of horrors).

So what do we do?

The first part of the title of my piece is this: “When there’s an opening of the heart.” What I meant by it is being in a state where the heart feels more spacious, able to contain more, where joy and sorrow are allowed to expand, and where there’s suddenly more beauty in pretty much everything. I think often it comes after that same heart is struck with grief: it can break it, but I can also open it, right? (or maybe the opening happens through the breaking). For me, the grief has been continuous, coming in more and less pronounced waves. But also, I have just come back from a beautiful trip to Panama’s Darién region, where, together with an Indigenous filmmakers collective, we stayed at the Indigenous Wounaan community to conduct media and storytelling workshops. What luck, joy, privilege, and honour it was (you can read more about it here). As someone who likes to write and talk, I find it difficult to put it into words, honestly.

So I’m back in Panama City, with a heart that’s both open and full. Eyes that see a bit more anew, body that is just reminded of how happy it is when it is constantly outdoors, heart that is reminded of how amazing it is to engage in meaningful activities collectively.

But in the world, nothing has changed: Iran is being bombed. Trump is threatening to destroy it completely. Iran is being bombed. Israel is leveling Southern Lebanon. My politicians can’t condemn the mass destruction. [put this on repeat]

So what do we do with the various levels of how open that heart might be?

I think the only thing we can do is to continue pouring from it. To continue acting not out of hate for something but out of love for the people. To continue transforming the grief, the rage, and the occasional hopelessness (I know) into action.

To show ourselves that, even in the gravest of times, the heart didn’t close.
We didn’t lose our humanity.
We didn’t normalise mass destruction.
We didn’t mock the efforts of those who believed that we can do better – we joined them, we led them, we were them.

I think that this is, in the end, how we protect the heart.

I want my heart to be protected, and I want your heart to be protected.

And these days, it can’t be clearer that we have to do it very very very actively ❤️

As has been my closing sentence for some years now: stay strong but keep your heart open ❤️

Justina

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