So I was talking with a friend about complacency. And I thought of how little I have done for people outside of myself for quite some time. In the wake of the crap going on around the latest perpetration of racial injustice, my first thought was how I have not really done anything to address the issue of racial equity where I live.
Then I started thinking about how I haven't done anything to help the homeless. And I haven't done anything to work toward non-violence on the local or global scale. And I haven't done any interfaith work on building community and working toward a goal. And I haven't done any politically active things other than vote (And I don't always do that. Which makes me feel really awful) I started looking around to see what organizations are already doing in my area in one or the other or all of these things and I started thinking about how maybe I could help start a new committee at the Quaker meeting dealing with... something. Or everything. And we could work on writing letters and calling people and not being part of anything that has the word "mob" in it and maybe we could engage in some kind of collective something with other groups or education of ourselves or just... SOMEthing. But then I started getting pulled into one thing after another and I began to freak out about all the crap that is going on everywhere and how little I can actually do about it and why should I even bother and how can I possibly have had my head so far in the sand for so long and here I am back in my privileged white-girl-in-a-white-man's-world because I have been ABLE to not do anything about these issues. I can stay in my safe neighborhood in my warm house with my enough food and my educated children and my employed spouse and local police officers who treat me with respect and store employees who don't give me a second look when I walk around browsing. I can be invisible. I can relax. I don't have the kind of mind-numbing stress that faces so many of my students at college, even. So what the hell is my problem? And then I remember that I can't even manage to check my personal email to sign up for a Google group set up to connect parents from my Quaker meeting for the purpose of building community between just the families of my own meeting. And that just because the meds are right, doesn't mean that I get to tackle all the ills of the world. And I remember that I filled out the application to volunteer with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). And that I promised NOT to put so much on my plate that my schedule becomes a hectic nightmare. So I will try to start small and remember that I can't and shouldn't do everything. Even if I feel strongly about so many things. Ugh. Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |