On Being the Antichrist. If not Worse.

As a notorious people-pleaser who wants to be liked, if not loved, by pretty much everyone, it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that, in a certain circle of friends, I seem to represent Evil Incarnate. I used to considered myself an (emotionally) intelligent, environmentally-conscious, waste-avoiding person and even now slap myself on the shoulder for not buying that sexy fruit or vegetable flown in from faraway countries even if there was no locally grown alternative.

All my efforts are annihilated completely, however, by my passion for air travel (long-distance even), persistant use of Uber and the like and the fact that I not only buy clothes and accessories whose origin I can track down to the very person who produced them. Mind you, I really don't buy from brands who are notorious for their sweat shops and have considerably cut down on the instant-gratification spending I was known for in my twenties and thirties, but I don't look at every label to put it back on the shelf if it was not produced in a country where bad practices have occurred.

So, whenever I meet with said circle of friends, I more or less anticipate the inevitable lecture and I have stopped defending myself or even mentioning what I've been up to recently as it invariably involves highlighting some bad behaviour of mine that negatively impacts the climate or human rights. It's not that I approve of everything that my friends do either and you can count on me for being that person who often blurts out the first thing that comes into her mind, but I have made a conscious effort not to be so openly judgemental as I now know first hand how uncomfortable it can make you feel to be singled out as the baddie in an otherwise rather homogenous group of people.