When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal.
Interpretation
Engaging with injustice reduces personal pain by addressing feelings of guilt and despair.
Desmond Tutu's quote emphasizes the importance of confronting injustice directly rather than remaining passive. By getting involved, individuals not only help to remedy the suffering around them but also alleviate their own feelings of guilt and hopelessness, allowing for emotional healing for both themselves and those affected by the injustice.
In practice
During a speech on social responsibility, I quoted Desmond Tutu to encourage involvement in community issues.
The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions
As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.
Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.
Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
Our way of getting an army able to fight the German army is to declare war on Germany just as if we had such an army, and then trust to the appalling resultant peril and disaster to drive us into wholesale enlistment.
When I was growing up, officers in uniform were very impressive to me. They were doing a job. They were protecting our country; they were heroes. When you wear an old military jacket, there's some sort of connection to those qualities - to being strong, to being tough, to being a warrior.
It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.
God help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash _x000D_ a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying past
To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.
When the Nobel Committee chose to honor me, the road I had chosen of my own free will became a less lonely path to follow.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.