Not Every Blank is X

It's no coincidence that the truths that make us feel the most uncomfortable are the ones so many of us feel the need to try to soften or outright deflect with phrases like, "Not every blank is X." You see, we don’t like to deal in truth as humans. The truth is messy and uncomfortable and scary, and it often means accepting that our march through life takes place contrary to our wishes and fantasies. We tend to spend a lot of our lives wanting and acting like something or someone is a particular way despite evidence to the contrary. And that’s often why we suffer and are unhappy.

But it’s precisely because a truth makes us uncomfortable that we must needs confront it. It is only by dealing with something directly and honestly as it is, not as we want it to be, that anything can be changed. Running from the truth only makes things worse. It makes it worse for you, for me, for them, for everyone. If your go-to response is, “Well, not every blank is X,” not only are you denying someone the validity of their experience, but quite fucking honestly, that makes you part of the problem.

You are why this is going on.

Listen, if you haven’t accepted this by now, there is only a single and indisputable absolute in this life you are currently living and that is that someday you will die. Period. That’s it. The only absolute ever. Got it?

So, now let’s be clear, no one is saying that every single cop is a racist killer. It's just like that other conversation we were having not that long ago when no one was saying that every single man is a misogynist. However, the problem IS that for each of these enough of them ARE that we find ourselves right here, right now in this very predicament.

And here’s the thing. You know it. You really do, deep down. You know it as the God’s honest. What you’re doing is compartmentalizing it. Oh, well, you know, that’s just this isolated thing over here. It’s not a larger issue and certainly not anything that concerns me. You're hoping that way you won’t have to do anything or examine anything and can go on about your life pretending. You can't. You live here too. 

So stop.

Just like that. Stop.