As per Margaret Mead’s storied advice, I have never really
doubted that “a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the
world.”
Along those lines, I am nearly (but not entirely) sure that
I didn’t do an involuntary victory fist pump in the grocery store parking lot when I walked by a poster for the
350.org People’s Climate March this morning. I deeply hope that it will not be a small number of people
who gather in New York City and in solidarity around the world this September 20th
and 21st. Because, if a small group of thoughtful, committed people
can change the world, just imagine what a LARGE group of thoughtful, committed
people can do! Anything. Everything.
Whatever the political goals and gains of a people’s
movement, I believe that the greatest true success of such actions is the
awareness of a community, of being one of many who believe and act in joyful
expectation of what ways of being can yet be brought into the wider world. I am
hungry for this sense of being part of and party to something greater than
myself, for the reassurance that my hopes can braid into others and, together,
we can bring about the sorts of changes necessary to enable the systems of the
world and the patterns of our daily lives to stop harming and start healing the
planet for all our sakes.
With of this hope-glittering belief, all of my midnight
worries and sunlit bursts of dazzling joy regarding the better world I strive
towards in all things, with my own aforewritten admonishment to just show up
for such things where merely being a numbered participant really does matter, and
all that I want to not feel so alone in wanting to change the world, I feel a
little bittersweet that I will not be marching in New York, or anywhere else,
that particular weekend to demonstrate for the causes of thoughtful love and
committed passion that are necessary to change the world.
Instead, I’ll be witnessing the wedding of some dear
friends. It is impossible for me to even think of their wedding without
smiling, so I am sure I have made the right choice. There is no choice; their commitment to each other is simply where I must be present.
I say, too often and not often enough, that I am friends
with the greatest people on earth, but it is in the lives of my loved ones that
I see how many good and glorious actions and ways of being there are in the
world. Most simply, my people know themselves and are true to those selves—such
joy and honesty are the best tools I know for building a better world out of
the best parts of our present reality. Most of the good being done in the world
spirals out from well-aligned love and self-awareness. I believe this amalgam
is what Margaret Mead meant by “thoughtful.”
I am absolutely in favor of all kinds of nonviolent actions
and movements and protests to draw attention and educate and advocate for
environmental and social issues. By any and all means—from letters to the
editor to Twitter to running off to the wilds to joining a CSA to street theater
and marching bands to poetry to blockades to parades to living as simply as
Thoreau to donating your corporate muckety-muck wages to the causes of your
heart to whatever sparks your soul that “YES! What I want and believe and hope
for is possible and I am part of making
it so!”—I love to see people rising up and coming into their own, of waiting
only as long as it takes to hear the truth of their heart and act in the light
of that clarity.
To me, a marriage between wonderful people is as great an
act and action of faith in the better world we can build as anything public and
political. It is an act of love, a thoughtful commitment to the unknown future,
and an honest articulation of changing one’s way of being due to the truth of
the individual heart. In truth, I believe all our actions and uses of time and
treatment of the people around us are manifestations of an individual’s way of
being in and hopes for the world.
To that end, as much as policies and politicians and fossil
fuel executives and cultural nasties who foment the feelings of inadequacy that
pressure us into lives that are untrue to our hearts and souls and whoever else
shapes the world, whoever and whatever we protest against and demand change of,
regarding the climate and everything else, what most needs to change is us,
each of us, individually. This will lead to collective change—see above
regarding small groups and social change—but it is on our own shoulders, souls,
and ways of being that changes must happen. We need, each of us, to come to a
marriage of sorts between our hopeful hearts and our corporeal lives.
Change is hard and messy and uncertain. It is one thing to
advocate for divestment from fossil fuel industries, and another to divest
oneself of unquestioning reliance on fossil fuels by riding a bike more and
using computers, phones, airplanes and microwaves less. It is, perhaps, easier
to commit oneself to a political ideology than a personal code—I will never
forget the people I knew in college who bought cheap materials from Wal-Mart to
make anti-capitalism shirts for a WTO protest. Anyone can justify their actions to themselves, of course, but I such hypocrisy makes me physically uncomfortable.
I dearly hope that the People’s Climate March turns some
important tides. That political leaders watch and listen and join, that change
is wrought on deep levels in everyone’s souls and we come around in a year’s
time to more and more solar power and public transportation and simpler lives
with fewer, but more useful, long-lived, meaningful and beautiful possessions,
that we come together to create a more perfect and just world. That people have
come see their own lives in the rising tides and erratic weather and square their
fears with their hopes and act kindly, honestly and accordingly to build lives
around what they hold dear. When there is news coverage of how this particular
weekend in September is something like a Freedom Summer or Stonewall or March
on Washington, I will perhaps regret that I was not present for a big moment in
The Revolution.
On the other hand, I keep a note on my wall that reads:
“life is the action.” We do not have just a handful of times to show up and demonstrate
our commitment to bettering the world. We have a lifetime of committing to the love and truth of our hearts and the life changes required to be faithful to those ideals. I believe the smaller and personal will likely,
in the long run, trump the big and public acts, both in terms of how we truly
change the world and in where we find our satisfaction and joy.
All the same, if you can get to New York City, please do. Sign up here: http://peoplesclimate.org. Thank you.
(Poster by Josh MacPhee, grabbed by me from www.justseeds.org)
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