The Trouble With Caring

Hi guys. I'm feeling kind of down today, so I thought I'd try to write and see if that cheers me up.

The trouble with being an activist is that it means being discontent. There are a lot of times when I just wish I lived in a different world, when I wish I could go back to the simple view of the world where everything was okay and all I had to worry about was whether or not I could convince mom to give me enough computer time to roleplay to my heart's content. When music and art, family, friends and church were my entire world, and the world was therefore a wonderful place full of magic. When there wasn't anything I was fighting for except preserving what I already had. I was content with life.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that sense of peace, of sanctuary. I wish I could shut off the part of my brain that looks at every experience, every book, every conversation, every meal, as something which can be socially critiqued and dissected to show the state of the human mind at any given age in history. I wish I could go to church without thinking about all the pain and alienation which is propagated by some of the ways people think about and discuss the gospel... I wish I could just focus on my own spiritual life as if I lived in a vacuum and my actions didn't affect everyone else. I wish I could think of Thanksgiving with warm fuzzies, without thinking about all the animal deaths and suffering that goes into that warm and happy family time.

But I can't. Yes, I still have spiritual warm fuzzy moments, I still enjoy holidays and spending time with my family. But it's not the same as it used to be, when I was blissful in my ignorance.

Now that I have become aware of these things, I can't just ignore them. They never completely go away.

So by opening my mind to these issues, have I doomed myself to a lifetime of never being fully at peace? Well... now that very sense of pain is my motivation. People never seek to change something if they're happy with how it is. I think in order to become an activist, I had to realize that the world as it currently is, is not the kind of world I want to live in. Things could be so much better. So the only way I can be at peace is if I feel that I am moving the world, or at least trying to move it, in the direction of that better world, where these issues will finally be laid to rest. Where violence will not be commonplace.

I think a lot of people find their peace with the world through accepting things as they are. That's why it's so hard to get people to think about certain things--it upsets their peace of mind. But if nobody was ever upset about how things were, they would never change. If all women everywhere always accepted that their husbands had a right to beat them, women would never have asked for equal human rights, and to be valued the same as men. If all slaves and slave masters had accepted that their relationship through slavery was the natural order of things, slavery would never have been abolished. Basically, if no one had ever suffered by opening their minds up to the possibility that the world is in fact NOT the way it should be, we would still be in the dark ages.

Yeah, I get exhausted by having to force myself to speak out. I am not a naturally confrontational person. I HATE upsetting people, even if maybe it needs to happen sometimes. I also am not very confident and easily doubt myself. But there is something inside me that keeps pushing. "SPEAK! SPEAK! SPEAK!"

It's annoying, but I think it's because I know I will never be at peace unless I am trying to move the world forward. I wish ignoring problems actually made them go away, but I know that life doesn't work that way.

All I can do is hope that God carries me through and gives me the strength to keep going. Because it's a lot better to be riding upright on the horse, rather than dragged by the stirrup.