Responding vs. Reacting
There’s a strange balance that is becoming ever more necessary in these challenging and demanding days. It’s a balance between two seemingly opposed priorities - protecting your own inner peace while also working to lessen suffering and increase justice. It’s becoming more difficult with each day that brings more chaotic news and occurrences. Lately I’ve been a part of some protest marches that have given me an opportunity to think more deeply about how these two priorities of protecting our peace and striving for justice in the world are related.
As humans, we have a completely understandable tendency to allow our frustration, anger, confusion, and sadness to be what motivates us into some kind of reaction (or inaction due to overwhelm). Invariably, that messes with our sense of peace within. Can I suggest that there is an important distinction between REACTION and RESPONSE? See if this makes sense for you…
I’m starting to understand REACTION as… taking action with the same motivation, intention, and energy that provoked you to act in the first place. In other words, reaction is meeting anger with anger, or using hate to respond to hate. Reaction comes out of an impulsive place of retribution at someone or something by any means necessary.
RESPONSE, on the other hand, seeks to act out of a sense of overarching purpose that existed before we were ever provoked. Instead of using the same energy that provoked the reaction, response comes out of a preexisting commitment based on values and ideals. I think this the wisdom behind Dr. King’s famous statement about darkness not being able to drive out darkness and hate not being able to drive out hate. A philosophy of reaction adds to the darkness, hate, and anger while being destructive to our sense of inner peace.
Only light and love can overcome darkness and hate, and a preexisting commitment to those ideals is where the much more powerful, consistent, and healing RESPONSE comes from. Interestingly enough, I believe responding out of those ideals not only protects our inner peace in the midst of chaos, it actually strengthens our experience of and ability to spread that peace to others as we work for justice. For our protests and justice work to have lasting power and effectiveness, they must flow from a place of response. There are ways through the forest of frustration and confusion that can build us up as a community…if we will listen to history, and act from our commitment to love as a power capable of conquering every challenge before us.