There comes a moment in every life where we wonder, “What’s the point?”
Do you ever pack up your recycling, stir up your compost, and then look at your neighbor throwing everything right in the trash and wonder, “Why bother?” Do you ever work hard at something you truly believe in, whether it’s animal rights or helping battered women or helping the homeless, and then step back and look at the issue and feel like that the work you’ve done is barely a drop in the bucket? I think at some point everyone feels that way, no matter what issues are important to them. Some people let those feelings stop them from ever getting involved. But to borrow from Journey, don’t stop believing!
A lot of people feel like a new age is upon us. Whether you believe that the year 2012 will bring a new age (12/21/2012 is the day the odometer of the Mayan calendar resets itself), or whether you believe that we are just in a period of upheaval, the changes in social order, gender equality, communications and civil rights of the last hundred years have created a world unlike anything our ancestors experienced. The point is, I truly believe this is the greatest time to be alive! If you’re a progressive/hippie/tree hugger/dirt worshiper then I bet you have, at one time or another, owned something with the following quote on it:
“Be the change you want to see in the world” -Gandhi
You’ve heard it a million times. Your roommate has it on a coffee mug and your best friend has it tattooed on her back. But listen, if there was ever a time to put it into practice, it’s NOW. We’re people that just want to live our lives peacefully, safely, and freely. We’re people who can’t stand by while we see suffering. We can’t be distracted by bread and circuses while Rome burns. And we are the future. Never forget that. The world is becoming more transparent every day. Shady backroom deals and the old boys club can’t be the status quo when everything is transparent and the second something happens it’s on Twitter and Youtube and Facebook. At the same time that communications are getting faster and easier than ever, we’re also getting that technology into the hands of more people than ever before.
We have to stop waiting for “someone” to fix things. The title of an Alice Walker book says it best, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” There won’t be a superhero in a cape coming to clean up the streets and fight injustice anytime soon. We have to be our own heroes. What does this mean for you? It means you have to be willing to stand up for what you believe in, but you aren’t the Lone Ranger fighting littering and injustice by yourself. YOU HAVE AN ARMY! And all we have to do to work as an army is simple: be the change. Live the way you wish the whole world would live. You do it, and I’ll do it, and our friends will do it and suddenly it won’t be one bag of recycling, it will be 10,000 bags or 100,000 or 1,000,000. But it will never happen if we give up now!
But what about all the negativity and hate? The talk radio hosts that want to make us feel like victims so they can be our savior, the TV pundits who raise ratings by raising anger instead of proposing solutions, and this faction and that faction and everyone with their own agenda are everywhere. Doesn’t that just show we haven’t made any progress? No! Those are the death throes of the old school of thought! It shows that we’ve made such amazing progress!
And can we all please stop equating saving the world with sacrifice? Why do we always have to equate being a good person with sacrifice and suffering? Yes, if you want to reduce your carbon footprint you may have to sacrifice having the A/C on 65 all summer. But who wants to wear a sweater in August anyway? You can enjoy being cold all winter! Let’s stop thinking about what we are giving up and start thinking about what we’re gaining. When we recycle, we’re gaining all those raw materials that we don’t have to mine out of the earth or create in a lab. When we build community, we have that community to lean on when we need it. When we help others we feel a unique kind of joy in our hearts that can’t be recreated by blaming someone else for the world’s problems. It’s time to stop worrying about who’s fault it is and start fixing it!
“It was the poet June Jordan who wrote “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Sweet Honey in the Rock turned those words into a song. Hearing this song, I have witnessed thousands of people rise to their feet in joyful recognition and affirmation. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for because we are able to see what is happening with a much greater awareness than our parents or grandparents, our ancestors, could see. This does not mean we believe, having seen the greater truth of how all oppression is connected, how pervasive and unrelenting, that we can “fix” things. But some of us are not content to have a gap in opportunity and income that drives a wedge between rich and poor, causing the rich to become ever more callous , and complacent and the poor to become ever more wretched and humiliated. Not willing to ignore starving and brutalized children. Not willing to let women be stoned or mutilated without protest. Not willing to stand quietly by as farmers are destroyed by people who have never farmed, and plants are engineered to self-destruct. Not willing to disappear into our flower gardens, Mercedes Benzes or sylvan lawns. We have wanted all our lives to know that Earth, who has somehow obtained human beings as her custodians, was also capable of creating humans who could minister to her needs, and the needs of her creation. We are the ones.” -Alice Walker, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.
