Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Routine disrupted. My loft computer is now downstairs where I can hook it up to the internet. On Monday I have a serious computer service company coming out to create a wi-fi or hardwire setup. Calmed down after I made a decision to get it done once, then forget about it. My problem is that I obsess about these things until they get taken care of. If I’m trying and failing to fix things, then I keep obsessing. Tiring.
Sad about guns, about the killing, about terrorism, about the obtuse beliefs of NRA fanatics, about climate change deniers, about the too slow pace of change toward a sustainable future. Angry, too. Yes, angry. In the past sadness and anger have pushed me into political work. Got started when I was a freshman in high school and found the school itself a barrier to learning.
Today, though, I find myself on the sidelines watching a circus where the acrobats miss the trapeze, where the fire eater gets consumed by his element, where the animals smash the cages and trample the crowd. The world has once again sunk into madness.
Yes, the world is always mad. War began thousands of years ago. Slavery, too. People without power did terrible, unthinkable things to break free. So, in a way, the diagnosis of madness, of chaos and insanity, is a tautology. The world is. The world is mad.
It’s also true that any one action, any one person, even any political movement has little chance of creating change systemic enough to bring sanity. Yet, as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It might be this action, this person, maybe you. It might be this political movement, this one you choose to support.
Where am I going here? What I want to say is that the only way to avoid despair is to choose to act in some way. I won’t be on the sidelines much longer, the projects of our making this home ours will finish and I’ll find somebody to team up with. Somebody to shake a fist with. To make what strangled sort of cry we can. Fatalism just doesn’t work for me. Might be about the third phase and our lives in it.
