Feeling Stuck in Injustice

When Emotions Don’t Move Forward

There is a force that challenges our mind and our well-being: injustice.

It appears when life does not unfold the way we wish—when others succeed, and we feel left on the sidelines, when we miss an opportunity, or even a train or a flight. It can feel like swimming against the current of a river, using all our energy and getting nowhere.

When this happens, the mind easily turns inward and begins its familiar dialogue: Why me? This isn’t fair.
Without noticing, we slip into stagnation—not because the situation is immovable, but because our thoughts and emotions stop flowing.

Yet within this experience lies an opportunity: not to fix injustice, but to understand what keeps us emotionally stuck in it.

Mind Distortion — Why Injustice Traps Us

Everything begins in the mind.  Injustice becomes overwhelming when we stop questioning our thoughts and start believing them as facts. The mind compares, judges, and creates expectations about how things should have happened. When reality does not match those expectations, frustration and resentment arise.

Emotions naturally follow—anger, disappointment, sadness. There is nothing wrong with these emotions. The difficulty begins when we replay them repeatedly, hoping for a different outcome in a situation we cannot change. At that point, perception becomes distorted. We no longer see clearly; we relive the same story again and again.

When we are willing to pause and observe our thoughts, awareness grows. When we allow ourselves to feel emotions without feeding the mental narrative, perception slowly turns into understanding. This is where movement becomes possible again.

A Story — Seeing the Mechanism in Real Life

I saw this mechanism clearly when my oldest son was eleven. He trained diligently to make his middle school baseball team. He had played for years, practiced all summer, and showed up fully for three days of tryouts after school. He did well—so well that the coach and other players complimented him. We were hopeful. He was excited.

On the fourth day, he went to the board at school to see the list of selected players. His name wasn’t there. The disappointment was real, made worse when the coach’s son confided the reason: only players from the Pony League had been chosen, not those from Little League. Despite his skills, he never truly had a chance.

It was painful to witness. As a parent, my instinct was to intervene. Yet my son declined. At eleven years old, he understood something important: his worth was not determined by a decision he could not control. His ability did not disappear because of an unfair system.

What surprised me most was realizing that I was more upset than he was. He had already separated what was within his control—his confidence and love of the game—from what was not—the politics of the leagues.

Non-Attachment — Extracting the Lesson

As time passed, the lesson became even clearer. My son moved on quickly. I did not.
I was attached to an idea of what I thought his happiness should look like. I assumed being part of the team was essential for him, and that assumption created my suffering.

Months later, he told me he was actually relieved not to be on the school team. The training schedule conflicted with his Little League team, where his friends were. What I had believed to be injustice was, for him, simply a redirection.

This experience showed me how attachment works. As long as we attach our happiness to outcomes, recognition, or others’ decisions, we lose our inner balance. We cannot control fairness. We cannot control others’ actions. But we can observe where we are holding on to expectations that no longer serve us.

Injustice itself is not what keeps us stuck. Attachment is.

Conscious Response — A Practical Reframing

Injustice is everywhere. It can be frustrating, disappointing, and even infuriating. Fighting it mentally does not free us; it often deepens our suffering. The question then becomes: What is within our power?

We cannot change others’ judgments or decisions. What we can change is how we respond. When the mind repeats, “They should have done this,” or “This isn’t fair,” we remain trapped in the loop. When we decide to let others carry their responsibilities and focus on our own actions, something shifts.

This is where emotional balance begins. Not by denying what happened, but by redirecting energy toward what we can influence: our goals, our values, our next step forward.

Movements for diversity show this clearly. Faced with injustice, they do not wait for permission to exist. Rooted in authenticity, they stand as they are, showing up fully and creating change through example.

So I invite you to reflect:
What is the last feeling of injustice you experienced?
And what part of it can you resolve—not by changing the situation—but by changing your response?