How what I’m doing feels, subway version
Sometimes I feel like I’m responding to someone who fell on the subway tracks.
No one else acts. I jump down onto the tracks to help the person to safety, but the person is morbidly obese and struggles just to lift themselves from the ground. They’ve decided to stop trying. “It’s too hard. It’s not worth it.”
They resign themselves to the train hitting them. “As long as I can’t do anything, I might as well enjoy the time I have left,” they say, and get out some Twinkies.
I’m trying to help the person to safety, or even just to try to move. I’m trying to lead them to see that if they free themselves, they’ll be glad they did. But they suggest they’ll just keep falling later and being helpless.
I recognize their mindset is the problem and try to help them change it. They keep focusing on their being too uncoordinated to do anything now and being unable to imagine a future life where similar problems don’t keep happening. They just say “I can’t change how I live. If I did, it would be worse.”
I’m trying to liberate them. I’m trying to help them liberate themselves. They keep insisting getting free is worse than giving up.
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