This is a strange time. I mean, a really strange time. It’s hard to believe that earlier this year I had an internal debate about whether or not I should enter a patient’s room with a mask. I had been advised to do so by the clinic staff, but the attending physician had no such concern. Patient diagnosis? The flu. COVID-19 wasn’t yet on anyone’s mind, and yet there I was in fear of potentially offending the patient by wearing a mask for my own personal safety.

I honestly can’t remember whether or not I chose to wear the mask, but I do remember the discomfort I felt in watching the patient’s own office-provided mask sit comfortably beneath her chin, leaving nothing else covered but the fraction of an inch behind her ears that held the mask in place.

I couldn’t help but to think, Why are you even wearing this mask? It clearly serves no purpose because it’s protecting neither one of us right now. Can’t you see that?

I could have, and probably should have, used this as a teachable moment, but instead I decided against it. I am only a med student, after all. I wasn’t sure it was my place.

At any rate, this post isn’t about masks, COVID-19 or any of that. The central idea is that we all want the same thing. You see, neither the patient nor I desired to have the flu. She wanted to be free of it and I wanted to be protected from it. We both had the same overarching goal of being in good health. I get the flu shot every year to achieve this goal. And, while I don’t know if this patient was an anti-vaxxer or not, I do know that our encounter in the doctor’s office could have been avoided altogether that day. Same goal, different approach.

I genuinely believe that we all want the same things out of life: peace, love, happiness, purpose, health, desirability, financial security and all the rest.

We’re all striving to achieve the same goals, but we just have different ideas of how to get there. And so we butt heads on the field of life, often missing the end goal completely.

I think we’d be much further along as a society if we didn’t do this. It happens all the time, and the examples are endless. To take this concept a bit deeper, we’ll need to tap into the principles that I discussed in my “There is No Reverse“ post where I elaborate on the concept of privilege. Bottom line: You CANNOT be oppressed by a system that benefits you. Understanding that everyone carries some form of privilege helps us to more easily lend empathy to other movements that we would turn a blind eye to or otherwise discredit.

There’s a connection between every social justice movement happening in the world right now. Besides them all naturally wanting the spotlight to shine a little bit brighter on their own specific cause, there’s another aspect of human nature that’s working against each of them simultaneously, and it’s this:

We each tend to act in our own self-interest, no matter how self-less we think we are.

The reason that non-Black people are uncomfortable with the progression of the Black diaspora is because no one wants to be boxed out of their privilege. That’s really it. That’s the central issue.

The thing is, I don’t think every single conservative, racist, homophobe or misogynist is a terrible human being at their core. I know, I know. Hear me out. Some of them are, and I get that. But, I truly believe that at the core of every conservative, racist, homophobe or misogynist is… fear. Fear of irrelevance, loss of power, money, rights and overall privilege. Why else is there so much angst?

Each win for the oppressed is mistakenly perceived as a loss for the privileged. And, since the wins are viewed as threats, members of the oppressed group inevitably become viewed as a threat.

We do this in everyday life all the time. I think most of us would be lying to say that we’ve never subconsciously perceived someone else’s “wins” as a threat to our own validation. I mean really, why did you hate that popular kid in school? At the heart of it all, we’re really not all that different from each other. Our perspectives just differ.

If we could all open our eyes a little wider and become more honest with ourselves, then we could admit that the only issue that comes with one group earning their rights is another group losing their comfort.

It’s this notion that makes it okay (and kind of necessary) to have at least one or two Black models for representation purposes in most beauty campaigns nowadays, but having them in the majority would face criticism of “taking it too far”. It’s the same reason that while homosexual love stories have become normalized in mass media, having one at the center of a feature film in every other theater would face criticism of “taking it too far”. One can hardly debate that while most people have no problem with the existence of the WNBA, having women play on NBA teams would absolutely face criticism of “taking it too far”. This same concept can be applied in so many spaces. The “I’ll fight for you until it conveniences me” attitude running rampant through or society is what keeps the privilege status quo flowing.

It’s like most of us support the idea that people shouldn’t go to the extremes of physically harming another group because of who they are or what they believe, but the moment that supporting one group’s rights impedes on our own personal comfort level, then it becomes a problem. Then it’s “too much.”

And maybe that make us ALL part of the problem. Because, if you dig down deep enough, you’ll find that we’re all like this in some way.

We all want the same thing, we just first and foremost want it for ourselves and don’t really care too much if that means it’ll take away the ease of access for another subset of society to fulfill those exact same goals of peace, love, happiness, purpose, health, desirability, financial security and all the rest. And since this is just part of human nature, I’m not entirely sure what the solution is. Hey, I don’t have all the answers, ya girl just has the insight to piece it all together.

From where I’m standing, I think empathy, understanding and awareness will bring our society one step to reaching our goal. Until then, I guess we’ll keep butting heads with each other until we realize that the idea is to act as a team. Maybe then we can finally win the game.