We act like we have a halo on our heads

Sometimes I look at the way we talk about outsiders, the jokes we make in the tea shop, the hushed conversations on the ferry, and I have to stop. We act like we have a halo on our heads, like our smallness and our faith make us inherently pure, inherently better. But then I see the way we glare at the foreign worker on the next stool, or the dismissive wave we give to a question asked in broken Dhivehi. Where did this righteousness come from? This unshakable belief in our own moral superiority, even as we build our new apartments on the backs of their labor? It’s a strange thing, this halo. It feels heavy, not holy. It’s the weight of a thousand eyes on an island where everyone knows your name, where reputation is everything. Maybe we wear it so no one sees the cracks. The cracks of our own doubts, our own compromises. We point fingers at the ‘other’ because it’s easier than looking at the mess we’ve made ourselves—the political squabbles that feel endless, the rising cost of a simple bag of rice, the slow erosion of the reef that is our very home. Hatred is a simple, burning fuel. Introspection is a much harder, quieter sea to navigate. But the truth is this, and the sea always whispers it back: a halo built on sand will wash away. This performance of purity, it isolates us. It builds walls in a nation of scattered islands that can only survive through connection. I wonder what would happen if we took it off for a day. If we saw the foreign face not as a threat, but as another person just trying to navigate their own rough sea. Our strength was never in our exclusion; it was in our community, in our ability to welcome the traveler, to share the catch of the day. Maybe the real test of our character isn't in who we keep out, but in how wide we can open the door, and still remember who we are.