I’ve been overwhelmed the last couple of weeks with the social interactions required to be an activist and volunteer. I found myself saying well, when this is over then I can retreat…Except that it’s not going to be over for a very long time. The times and years ahead look to be very bad ones in terms of politics, economics, and violence. We are at the simmering point in our society. Things are going along as if nothing has changed, but in the last few years, it feels as if everything has changed.
There is an awareness of this moment that runs through my brain. Summertime. There is food in the stores and in our fridge. The heat finally broke for a few days of rain and cloud cover. We can still go to the doctor or hospital if we need to. We are able to go outside after dark. There are no armored vehicles on the streets. My daughter and I can go places unaccompanied, wearing whatever we’d like. Our neighbors don’t report us to the authorities.
I think about the days when my husband and I will be old and infirm and wonder if we will reminisce about abundance and cool temperatures. Will I miss books? Will he shush me, afraid that I’ll be overheard, when I whisper my angry protests about the evil that people do? Will I remember long ago poems and songs and recite them under my breath? Will I kill someone defending my family against scavengers and marauders? When I die, what kind of world will I leave my beloved daughter in?
Part of fighting for change or resisting bad policy is the impetus of doom. It’s seeing the precursors and imagining what comes after and after and after. It’s knowing enough history to know where things begin. There is a confluence of dangerous events – natural disasters relating to climate change, the rise of autocracy in America, the weakening of our national will to be innovative and inspired, the unpreparedness for biological disaster and warfare, the jellyfish spines of people who have spent too long being entertained into mindless drones, pecking away at our smart phones.
But then there is now. If disaster is on the horizon, then what do we make of now? If the times that are coming will be of scarcity and secrecy and savagery, how do we live now?
We’ve been chicken-souped and memed to death about living every day as if it is our last, but what does that mean? And how is living on the razor’s edge sustainable? I don’t know how to work towards a better world, without imagining the bad things that could happen. I suppose part of retaining one’s drive is to focus on positive outcomes instead of the river of fear that flows beneath them. But even that misses the moment. We focus on the future either way.
There is always a call for balance, but I’ve come to believe that it is not the balance of the moment, but the balance over a week or month or a lifetime. It is difficult to step outside oneself and see if there is an equal number of tick marks in every column. What is balance for one person, is not for another. Some people can stay fired up and inspired for years at a time. Some of us can only manage an hour here or there.
Much of this questioning involves a constant recalculation of our locus of control; the measuring of the time between our actions and the results of those actions. What is the value of the time I spend with my family now versus fighting for the time it may spend in the future? In this moment, should I write another letter to another congressional representative that will be tallied and shunted aside or should I take a long walk and refresh my senses? The meaning starts large on my end, but means relatively little on the other. Just a number. Just a moment.
There is, at the root of these little arguments I have in my head, some core values. I believe in service to others. I believe that we are responsible for the damage we inflict on the planet and its creatures. I believe that we are defined by our choices. I also believe that we are weighed down by the fears we carry. Perhaps being present is when we lay down those burdens, if only for the moment. Perhaps it is the time when we get to remember what it’s all for.
These days, joyfulness sometimes eludes me. Prone to depression, desirous more often than not of solitude and quiet, I am outwitted by my impulses. I am perhaps not well-suited to activism, to recruit others to a cause, to lead a charge, but I can’t seem to help myself. I’ve come to accept it, but have not learned how to do it without feeling hollowed out after a time.
So I approach the moment with humility. I remember that I am not the solver of all things, the fixer of the world. And I come back. There are things that bring me back. My family. The garden. A passage in a book. A conversation with a friend. The reservoir refills and I straddle both worlds again. Balance is an illusion.
Without fail, it brings tears to my eyes. Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…It’s an odd patriotic twitch, much like praying to a god I don’t believe in when I’m scared. It’s reflexive indoctrination which serves religion and country well, keeping the machinery of industry and institution well-oiled.
Garden planning is on the horizon. I’m working on learning how to grow more year round and with a few different methods – grow lights, cold frames, and hydroponics. I’m strengthening my language skills, readying to speak French in Canada and Spanish in Mexico. And my Russian is cold war ready. I’ve made sure our passports are current.
Perhaps the shock of the last year – the vitriol, the conspiracy theories, all the Twittering and freaking out by wingnuts did what chaos has always done to me – forced me to find order and structure and calm within. I did not know so many people were so angry. And it has made me sanguine. I did not know so many people blamed others for the problems in their own lives. And it has made me seek more personal responsibility. My response is Newtonian in nature – an equal and opposite reaction.
Common sense deems that we are a rapacious lot – locusts that consume everything in our path. And everything is not an endless supply. At a time when we need science and academic pursuit to find innovative solutions for energy, antibiotic-resistant disease, and natural disasters, education and intellectualism are being denigrated. When population controls are needed, access to reproductive and family planning resources are being circumscribed and supplanted with religious ideology.
Perhaps it’s all a mirage, an indulgence of the quiet anger that I feel constantly beneath the surface. That we exist at the whims of people more powerful, more armed, more moneyed. That our existence may become paltry or cease entirely because lucre has become the law of the land and war the god we serve. It angers me and so I study, train, conserve, and strengthen. It may all come to naught in the end, but it beats the hell out of waiting.
Once upon a time, I had a business card with a job title. Over the years, I’ve saved each job’s business card, a potpourri of assistants and coordinators and managers. For a good portion of my working life, I did not have a business card and it felt meaningful when that first box arrived at my desk.
Elvis songs and how to draw cats. She remembers very little of those years. All that effort and awkwardly conscientious parenting, just a figment of my imagination.
For years, I’ve helped take care of my mother-in-law. She lived two blocks and one phone call away. Running her to doctor appointments, taking her grocery shopping, writing note after note as her memory failed. Guiding her through daily physical therapy exercises. Doing her taxes and paperwork. Sitting with her until the paramedics came. Now she is in a nursing home. And no one, especially her, remembers all the years before.
This morning, I sat on my cushion and prepared to meditate. I’d been feeling a tad smug that I’ve managed this practice for the last few weeks, without fail, building up from 5 minutes to a shiny 13. As I settled in, our tom cat began his caterwauling. I focused on my breath. He yowled louder. I kept my focus, feeling a little proud that I’d managed to let go of my sensory irritation. Then I realized that I had forgotten to set the timer.
I’ve had to tamp down all my #notallwhitepeople, #notallwomen, #notallliberals, #notallcitydwellers, #notallmidwesterners defensiveness and close myself off from the stream of blame pouring from every venue. Blame isn’t going to help the Trump supporters improve their lives and it sure as hell won’t help the rest of us move forward.
My initial reaction was a long laundry list of causes and needs that could easily paralyze me where I stand. We get overwhelmed with the number of things that could be fixed in this world. Sometimes we have to pick and choose what our priorities are and focus on them. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care about other issues. It just means we’re one human who can only do so much.
I am still finishing the letters to my congressional representatives. I forget that my writing process is always longer then I expect. I told them who I am, what I care about and wished them well as they enter into the fray.
I know I’m going to make mistakes and assumptions. I know I’m no saint and I expect to be schooled accordingly. I know that I may not fully understand the issues on the ground or the academic theory that drives feminism and racism and immigrant issues. But I’m here now. Tell me what I can do to help. I’m listening.
I’ve been thinking about our finances. Our family lives below its means, but now we’re going to take austerity measures. I want to give more support for causes I believe in (and we might need bail money). The future is uncertain and the effects of any Social Security and Medicare tinkering during this regime will hit hard when my husband and I prepare to retire. Likely when we’re 85, at this rate. This is a good time to sort out what we need from what we want.
The Green Study 