As a Bangladeshi-American student, there’s an interesting phenomenon I face in the classroom. In high school, my history class once discussed “oppressed Muslim women in the East.”
Teenage boys who grossly mistreated other girls at school rushed to argue that the hijabi woman needed to be freed from her mistreatment. I did my best not to roll my eyes at the hypocrisy (I failed).
I later learned about scholar Muaddi Darraj. She wrote: “[These arguments] wanted to save [Brown women] from the burden of their families and religion but not from the war, hunger, unemployment, political persecution, and oppression that marked their daily lives that left them with only their families and religion as sole sources of comfort.”
At the root of the issue is a trite oversimplification of what the supposed victim is facing. Ultimately, a blind saviour may help in the short term, but ends up contributing to the larger problem.
In our mission to save the world, many of us end up centering ourselves instead of others. I can’t count how many times I’ve wanted to say: “If you don’t confront what’s wrong within you, you’re not going to help anyone!”
This makes me think about love. Any kind of love.
Love often manifests in protectiveness. How can the person I love be allowed to suffer? Worrying over your loved one’s burdens can become overwhelming.
When we rush to do everything we possibly can to relinquish pain from someone’s life, it may just be that we’re centering our own worries instead of their experience.
Something interesting I’ve come to recognize is how the most arrogant person in the room is often dealing with feelings of inferiority. It’s an age-old concept: Beware of polar extremes. Yin and yang are intrinsically interrelated.
In committing yourself to one extreme, you are centering yourself around a fear of the opposite.
Advocacy becomes erasure. Overprotective love becomes fear and resentment. The tug-of-war never lets out. In the tug, it’s imperative that we consider how much of our love is actually driven by fear.
Love is more of a contradiction than our monkey brains would like to admit. And these are scary times. I understand how easy it is to blur the lines between what is right and what is easy.
We want black-and-white, we want the villain and the good guy, we want clear-cut answers, and a warm cup of tea. But that’s just your mind trying to control the outcome. That’s just fear talking.
Even with the best of intentions, love can begin to resemble ownership if inferiority holds the reins. But love is not ownership. Love is not a pedestal. Love is not self-sacrifice. And love is not delusion.
Surely, the person I love has their own life to live. And so do I.
People will come and go. But our fears are more about us than anyone we love.
Ultimately, love is an experience that’s meant to be lived. Being there for the people you love means knowing who you are first.
Is that terrifying? Yes. But that’s a conversation for my next piece.
Deya Nurani is a freelance contributor based in the US.
