Someone once told me that it isn't just that you think and learn about life; it's that you do something with what you know, once you learn it. I was young. It meant little to me at the time. But today, I struggle. Mostly, I struggle with myself and in a rather complicated, muddled state, about the "doing something" part of the things I learn. I struggle with “if” and “how” to do. I struggle with fear.
I do look at the world around me and beyond with interest. I do move about and work and love and suffer within it. I do see things: the birds as they fight the squirrels for the seeds my mother-in-law lovingly sets in feeders outside her kitchen window, the trash collectors each Monday as they clank their stinky trucks down Lexington Avenue, our nice mailman, Bill…my students...snow…wounded soldiers…my brother, Michael, dying from AIDS. And I do do some things in response. But sometimes, I do nothing. Sometimes I don't consider the consequences.
For example, the other day I pushed my bedroom storm window away from the sill in order to let the cool winter air blow in. I jammed an empty water bottle (Aquafina, I think) into the crook between wall and window to hold it open. I sat on my bed to read, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lovely Carolina wren fly onto the rooftop by my window. I watched her hop her small claws along the tiles toward my room. Then, she slipped between the sill and the bottom of the storm's frame and flew in. She flipped frantic against the walls and glass to get out. My heart pounded, but I just watched in wonder and called for help from someone in the next room. I was afraid I'd hurt her or me or both of us. The bird flew out on her own. Fear.
These days fear makes me mad.
Cigarettes scare me mad. War of any kind. Child abuse. Neglect. Garbage lining a beach. Emails surrounded by ads based on what I just wrote privately to someone. Bush…all of the Bushes, actually.
Why do we have to have presidents, politicians, fanatics, media who put fear in our minds day after day after day? Doesn’t this make you mad? Do we just respond, “Well, we have to have it…because we do.”? Can’t we come up with good ideas that benefit all, answers to things, sensible solutions to our problems and then, work to make them happen?
I mean, it scares me mad that cigarettes are legal, for example. That they’re legal and they’re manufactured with additives that kill the smoker, the bystander, the guy 1,000 miles away, the birds, the environment, the air we all breathe. This seems to me to be some sort of conspiracy or assault, even murder, because the people who make cigarettes know they kill. They even put this death knell on the packages: there is no such thing as a safe cigarette, including this one! Huh?? Shouldn’t we have laws against making and smoking cigarettes because they kill?? I think we should, but I'm not really doing much about it.
I learn, think, and teach about staggering statistics around deaths caused by cigarette smoke, about a lot of the things that are happening to our world. I ask my students to look at their world, to really think about what they see: the laws, the actions of people in power, the consequences for the powerless. Whether cigarettes should be legal. Whether we should have gone to war in Iraq. Whether Bush should be allowed to listen in on our private conversations without court sanction.
Their answers are mostly about personal rights and black market, loss of money, jobs, crops, security. Security?? Now this really scares me because they're young college students, and they have lots of possibilities ahead of them. They should be afraid of losing their health, their lives. But they aren't. None of us seem to be. Our inaction reflects lethargy and apathy toward a world out of control. This apathy scares me.
Oh, there's Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore and others who brave the cold shoulders of Bush and his cronies. But we're not in the streets in mass, shouting at this crazy administration about a questionable war, about presenting Congress with a $2.77 trillion budget that: doesn't include future costs of a questionable war, cuts 40 federal programs from education, chops student loans, makes elderly health care more expensive and less accessible (media call these "savings" for the country), and so much more. We have closed our winter windows on possibilities, on US democracy.
And the things is, I remember possibilities. I remember democracy. I'm 57. We protested injustices when I was in my 20s. We looked at our world of the late 1960s and early 1970s and acted to help peacefully change the things that many perceived were harmful:
Vietnam: we got out.
Silence: we shouted loud.
Racism: we sat in.
Women's rights: we stood up.
We read and wrote about Mahatma Gandhi, knew about non-violent resistance to unjust laws, marched and cried when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were righteous enough to fight for rights and get killed for it. We acted because we were afraid of the consequences of inaction. We lived in our world beyond our books.
So what I want to know is this. Why aren't students today reacting, in peaceful but loud protest, against the things that are hurting their world? But more importantly, why aren't I? What happened to me? Where did I go?
Fear isn’t something I like to claim, but I guess I have; it was my greatest motivator when I was young. These days, though, when fear shows up, like a Carolina wren trapped in a warm room in Iowa, I seem to give in to its lure. I let it shut me down and keep me from doing more than looking on in wonder. I'm comfortable. I've fought my battles. My hair's turning gray. Back's sore. Tired. I can call for help. I can simply watch until whoever's in trouble eventually finds a way out…or...doesn’t...
Nan
