When Evil Wins
How to save yourself when the world drowns you
Some thoughts accumulate like drops of water. You think them in unintelligible whispers, over and over, until one day you realize the water of your thoughts is way over your head, starting to drown you.
The thought that’s been accumulating for me lately:
Maybe evil always wins. :(
The evil that buys silence, funds campaigns, threatens or even kills witnesses, and distracts us with shiny new wars they’ve waged. Powerful men. Wealthy men. Men whose names open doors and close investigations. Men who face no reckoning, even when we know they’ve bought and sold human beings, used them, and gotten rid of them when they became a liability (I see you, Virginia Giuffre).
The people running the system are, over and over and over, not held accountable. Not for murder. Not for rape. Not for conditions so dehumanizing they violate every principle of human dignity we claim to stand for (I see you, US prison systems).
Slavery is alive and well in America.
And the people doing it go home at night. They run for office, and then they win.
The system that is too big, too entrenched, too protected, too powerful, too patriarchal, too greedy … evil always wins.
I felt my nervous system start to de-center itself under the weight of this thought.
That sense of helplessness.
Then grief.
Then a rage so big it has nowhere to go, so it becomes despair.
And then I did something so simple but so profound.
I said, out loud, to no one but me:
Stop.
I removed myself.
From the screens.
From the images.
From the bombardment of bad news.
From the relentless stories of injustice and outrage that was, I realized, not making me more effective.
My pain and exasperation was not helping.
It was not helping Virginia Giuffre and the hundreds like her.
It was not assisting all the people living on the streets, falling forward into fentanyl’s grip.
It was not freeing a single person from the institutional slavery of prison.
It was not bringing one powerful man to justice.
It was just slowly destroying my inherent optimism and loving heart, thought by thought and drop by drop.
And what good is a destroyed sensitive person to anyone?
The Practice
I made a conscious choice to stop focusing on what felt like evil.
And then I offered Metta (traditional loving-kindness meditation first practiced by the Buddha). And that changed everything for me, for my sensitive heart, for my overwhelmed mind, for my well-being.
I placed my hand on my heart and said,
May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I live with ease.
May I be free from suffering.
Then I expanded it, the same way you drop a stone into still water and watch the rings move outward.
Expanded to all women and girls hurt by men in power.
Expanded it to all those who are bought and sold by people in power.
Expanded it to all those impacted by war and violence.
Expanded it to all beings who are suffering in any way.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings live with ease.
May all beings be free from suffering.
And I felt peace return.
Not naivety. Not apathy. Just, the peace of someone who has remembered that we can never pour from an empty vessel. We can never fight for the oppressed from a place of collapse. Our nervous system going into overwhelm does not add any light into this world; it actually removes it.
The most radical thing I can do, and the most radical thing you can do, as someone with a sensitive nervous system and a heart that is wide and spacious, is return to center. And then, from that full, grounded place, decide what small action, what one word, what kind of energy, what offering is available to give.
All I could give in that moment was metta. So I sent metta to myself and to all beings.
And I came back feeling whole and peaceful.
Evil may be greedy and powerful, with connections and a million ways to delay accountability and distract until no one is watching anymore.
But it does not have the quiet, revolutionary act of one person choosing to stay centered. To stay whole. To stay beautifully human. To refuse to be hardened into the despondency or rage that can consume us rather than catalyze us.
That is mine.
That is yours.
And they cannot buy it or threaten it away.
Thank you for this, Anitra. I'm reading Virginia's book at the moment and it's hard not to be weighed down. I don't believe in evil, I do believe in humans acting out their own pain whether conscious or unconscious. Return to centre is vital, if we are to provide support and care and forge new ways of being that are safer and kinder. Your voice is always so clear and reassuring 🌿💚🌿
I didn't know it had a name, but that's how I stay grounded. Thank you .