A Whisper of Wholeness
When I realize that my bias and prejudice is a drift from love ... it is much easier to free myself to open my eyes to my own blindness.
Stand at the edge of the ocean and a rip current is nearly impossible to see. It doesn't announce itself with crashing waves. Often it looks like the calmest stretch of water. Smoother. Easier. The obvious place to wade in. That's exactly what makes it dangerous. You don't feel it take hold. You're simply swimming, doing what seems reasonable, and then you look up and the shore is much farther away than you meant to go. Bias works the same way. We imagine it as something loud and obvious, something only other people are guilty of. But most bias is a quiet current. It rarely feels like prejudice from the inside. It feels like the reasonable position, the calm water, the obvious way to see things. And little by little, without ever deciding to, we drift — away from the shore, away from love, out past where we ever meant to be.
Here is what changes everything: the moment I realize I've drifted. Not that I'm a bad person, not that I've failed some moral test — simply that the current caught me, the way currents catch everyone. That realization isn't an accusation. It's a rescue. Because guilt keeps my eyes closed. It makes me defensive, and defensiveness only pulls me further out. But the moment I see the drift for what it is — a movement away from love rather than a verdict on my character — something loosens. My eyes can open. And while I couldn't see the current on my own at all, often someone else can. Standing where I couldn't stand, seeing what I couldn't see, loving me enough to call across the water. Their sight became the beginning of mine. Maybe that's what love does most quietly of all. It notices the drift we can't feel — and opens the possibility of our journey back to shore.
For further reflection
Where might I have quietly drifted from love without realizing it? Who in my life can often see the current I am temporarily blinded to?