Survivor’s Guilt
When India was in its first phase of lockdown in 2020, the thing that most disturbed me was not the statistics about the rising covid cases. It was the picture of migrant workers walking towards their hometowns in the vast landscape of a country like India with little or no support from anyone. How utterly isolating that experience is? At the same time, I was sitting in the comfort of a home complaining about the limited stock available for the groceries. After seeing the devastating stories posted all over the Internet, I could not help wondering about how I ended up in such a position of privilege while the majority of my fellow citizens were going through such a crisis. It is pure dumb luck and nothing else. Our place and family of birth play a bigger role in shaping our destinies far more than we are willing to give credit for.
Privilege is a hard thing to accept for most of us. In our minds, the struggles we face are the most important and the toughest ones. I have always been the least privileged one in my friend circles, but I have also been extremely lucky in having people in my life who provided support and guidance without any expectation. This realization put me into a deep state of guilt. What makes me worthy of having a comfortable life? I couldn't understand. The only solution I could find at that time for this emotional turmoil was to give away a significant portion of my salary to the causes I trusted. It is the least I could do and I continue to do the same. If my contribution is helping anyone to have an easy life even for a moment, I would die as a happy person. It has more to do with avoiding the guilt than my generosity of spirit.
The problem comes when we don't know where to draw the line. The world will continue as a shitty place and let's admit that my meagre salary can never wipe out poverty. But the problem is that there is no dearth of requests for donations. I contributed to a meal program for one of the old age homes in my city and now they bombard me with visits and phone calls now and then. I grew tired of this and in the end, I had to give a hard no. It was not an easy task and I am grappling with guilt ever since.
I am still unsure of whether I was right in denying that request. These days I wake up in the middle of the night and blame myself for being such a cruel person. How can I not see the economic crisis around me just because I have a comfortable job? This plays in my mind in an endless loop. Last time when this happened I donated money through a friend so that they would not know it was me. Now I am beginning to think that the better way to let go of this guilty feeling is to have a fixed portion for such donations every month and say no to all the requests once this amount is crossed in the budget. In the end, everything comes down to the difficulty of saying no.
Next time when I come across such random donation requests, I hope I would be able to handle the situation better. I would rather prefer to make such donations anonymously than handing over money directly. I am still doubtful about wiping out the guilt entirely if I had to say no. But one can only try. What other option do we have?
