That’s the night that the lights went out on TikTok

In December 2019, I was in Malta when the power grid went down across the country.

We woke up in our hotel room to no lights, no phones charging, no wifi, no hair tools, no morning espresso. Our flight for the next day back to the States was in question, if the power stayed off long enough.

Wandering into the lobby to see if we could get answers, not a single hotel worker was in sight.

It was a weekday and outside, we heard cars rumbling up and down the city’s medieval cobblestone slopes, bringing generators to restaurants and cafes so Valletta could get back in business.

We had no clue what was going on, other than obviously the electricity was out. As we walked, we realized it was out everywhere, at least on our side of the Grand Harbor.

After walking for an hour and a half, we did find breakfast at a food hall that had gotten their generator on. Half the lights were out in the building, making its usually cheerful and bustling atmosphere gray and subdued.

Still we were grateful to have found some food and caffeine and, fortified, we decided to continue on with our day. We had planned to go to the Mdina Gate that day, an excursion that fortunately requires less electrical power than most.

I hailed a taxi.

“What’s happening?” we asked the cab driver. It was the first opportunity we’d had all morning to get answers.

“The power is out,” he answered. He maneuvered expertly onto the busy narrow triq (street).

“We noticed,” we replied. “Is this common?”

“No, the whole country is without power,” he told us. “Not common.”

“Why is it out? We haven’t heard anything.”

The cab driver, stopped at an intersection, turned around and looked at us.

“The President of Malta was voted out in the last election. He leaves office in January. He wants us to know that we need him, that he can take from us just like we took from him.” He put the car into gear again. “So he takes away the power from the whole island, the whole country. To show us.”

We careened out of the city. “No one likes the president,” our cab driver told us. “This does not help.”

We commiserated a bit about the troubles of the morning. Then something caught his attention on the radio. He turned it up full volume, blasting the broadcast in Maltese so we could hear it all. We do not speak Maltese.

He excitedly gestured to the radio. “Eh? Eh!” he said, nodding, satisfied. He turned it back down, that part of the broadcast over and advertisements begun. Advertisements sound the same all over the world, I’ve learned.

“See?” he said to us. “It’s a plot from the government, to show us.” We nodded along,

When we finally got electricity back a few hours later, I read online that the country of Malta gets all of its power from Sicily via an underwater electrical line. According to the news, that line had been compromised, leaving the entire island nation dark.

But multiple things can be true at once. As sensitives, empaths, and deep feelers, we know that more than most.

And truth is one of the biggest questions on the table this week.

When TikTok was banned in the United States—ever so briefly—last weekend, so many truths big and small and in between came flying out of their hiding spots:

• Influencers with enormous followings admitted to lying to their audiences about their content.

• Those who had pretended to support their friends’ and neighbors’ TikTok businesses for years exposed themselves as secret haters.

• People all over the world who had played nice in each others’ faces let their true feelings show when they thought the other’s back was turned.

• We learned that congressmen and congresswomen bought stock in TikTok’s competitor company before they voted on a law that would ban the app.

• The government’s involvement in social media was been revealed as more far-reaching than most of us ever realized.

• Questions abound about what deals have been struck, what conversations have been had, and what plans have been made out of sight of the public eye.

• At the systemic level, the truth of what really went down with the 12-hour TikTok ban has led to more questions than answers.

That is an exhausting level of truth to try to parse through and hold and accept in its multitudes in a short amount of time.

Most people around you won’t really try to hold it all at once. They don’t process and balance conflicting ideas and truths like you do. They see things as simple, surface-level, not that deep. They see from their perspective and their perspective only. This or that. Black or white.

We know different. It’s not black or white. It’s black and white and gray and a whole spectrum of color as well.

We know this because we know that we ourselves contain depths and spectrums and multiple truths at once. We know ourselves well and through our experiences, we’ve come to befriend the light and the dark and the shadows in between.

This is one of our greatest powers as deep feelers. It’s also something that gets us in trouble when it comes to managing emotions of others and taking on baggage that isn’t our own.

We can see all sides of the situation, that’s where our great empathy and kindness comes from. But sometimes we tend to get so busy looking at everyone else’s point of view that we forget to prioritize our own well-being and truth.

And that’s what I want to encourage you to do right now: Prioritize your own inner feeling, truth, and personal power. That light of yours within that shines in even the darkest of spaces, that speaks calmly and consistently even in the loudest of rooms.

Now isn’t the time to analyze, to intellectualize, to overthink what you’re feeling deep down. It’s too much information to wade through, and we don’t even have all of the facts at our disposal.

It’s time to trust your instinct, your intuition, your deeper senses.

Not everyone likes you. Not everyone wants what’s best for you. Not everyone wants you to use your considerable talent and light and energy for your growth. Individuals, groups, structures, systems—it goes all the way down and all the way up.

Some do want the best for you, some are playing pretend, and some are miserable and want you to go down with them.

Time to pay close attention to your internal sniff test.

If something seems off about a person, place, or situation, trust that you got it right. Even if it seemed fine yesterday, if it doesn’t pass the sniff test today, it’s a no today. That milk in the fridge was fine yesterday until it turned today, too.

When you sense that it’s off, it’s not right, something is amiss, you don’t have to rationalize what it is. Just like you wouldn’t interrogate yourself about not drinking curdled milk and why it’s not good for you and maybe you should drink it and maybe the milk is supposed to smell like that…you don’t need to cast doubt onto what your inner self knows to be true either.

You hold so many multiple truths in you at once that your heart will sort it out well before your mind. Choose what’s true for you, not what’s true for others. Choose what gives you light and power and energy and peace.

And then remove yourself from the thing that doesn’t feel right.

Block, unfollow, delete, unsubscribe.

Lose their number, decline the invitation, walk away, end the conversation.

Remove your support, your funds, your mentions, your vote.

In times like these, claiming your sensitivity as strength and personal power makes you the seer in the dark.

Others may not see what you see and that’s okay—let them not see it. They don’t have your powers of sensing the truth deep within. That has to be their journey, just as your journey has to be yours.