Ripples

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about intuition.

That thing where you know that something is coming. The low level hum that accompanies it.

That quiet, insistent call to cover your drink in a crowded bar, the way you can feel, walking into a room, that the temperature has dropped.

I’ve been thinking about the signs that become more obvious with time, where intuition meets instinct meets fight or flight.

The way you’re spoken over, your point claimed. The way that making someone feel less free while talking about the ideals of free speech seems to be the entire point.

The dehumanising comments about women - “today is a good day” when Roe v. Wade fell, “one serious violent or sexual offence might be a regrettable mistake. Perhaps even two, at a pinch” from an ACT newsletter, and about beneficiaries - “bottom feeders” from Luxon.

The fact that National’s heath spokesperson refused to rule out restrictions on healthcare access because that would be “a matter for caucus”.

The specific anti-LGBT+ sentiment in saying “those sexuality issues should be dealt with in the home” as opposed to school.

The constant posturing on equality that fails to take into account equity, that fails to account for the fact that not everyone starts in the same place or walks the world with the same privilege.

The deliberate fostering of fear, the language that talks about “us vs. them”, the language that positions “them” as less than, other, separate.

The way we talk about “abolishing”, of “cutting the fat”, of “removal”, of “getting things back on track” as if there are not thousands of people who would be silenced, devalued and harmed by these actions. As if there are no good people doing valid, valuable, critical work.

The way we look away from those we should be centering in all of our conversations, the way we choose to reach for a 1950’s dream that never existed and only ever benefitted some of us while claiming to work for everyone.

The way we have devalued both climate and health.

The way the value of kindness, that we chose to reject because it gave us a chance to exercise the misogyny that lies closer and closer to the surface these days, has been made into something that you wouldn’t dare to say out loud as part of any serious commentary.

The way we are voting for those who would create harm while telling those it would harm to stop being hyperbolic. 

The way we profess to centre vulnerable communities while refusing to hear the alarms they are sounding, or listen to the wisdom of lived experience.

Intuition is the visceral feeling of knowing that you don’t want walk into a room with someone because there is a subtle and growing and very real danger in doing so.

It’s that gut instinct that we’re told to ignore, the ripple of unease provoked by values that don’t align with actions, it’s the physical urge to run.

It’s the overwhelming evidence of behaviour that consistently results in “it was just a joke.”

It’s the insistence that it’s out of context, that it was taken the wrong way, that the gas lamp in the upstairs lounge was always that low, don’t worry about what’s hiding in the dark.

It’s the instinct that kicks in when you know something is very wrong but can’t articulate it.

It’s the instinct those who are always the first to experience that wrongness can recognise the moment ripples start to appear in the water.

If you’re feeling it now, I believe you.