Message To A Young Activist by Lucky

I was born in 1948. (On flag day, to a military family.)  I lived on, or near, Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases all my childhood. I first became aware of the atomic bomb when I was 10. It was always on the bases where I lived.  My Dad was missing for months during the Cuban missile crisis. My first concern was nuclear annihilation. It wasn’t until after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, that I became aware of the virulence of the environmental devastation I saw around me. It was during those years, when I didn’t expect to live to be 30, that I became an activist.

That means that I have been aware of devastating things about human nature for over 50 years now. I emphasize that, because I’ve aged in this world, which always seems to be teetering on the edge. During those many years, I’ve repeatedly felt great urgency. I’ve seen something of the greatness of humankind, and had years to wonder, at this specie’s destructive tendencies. My sense of justice has been sorely disappointed. And, as I awaken today,  at 66, I am a man who has grown up under the shadow of our kind’s carelessness.

Over these years, I’ve attended many protests, meetings, and participated in a variety of actions. I’m still doing so. The reason for this note is to let you know that during that time I’ve learned something. As a result of how life has progressed, and matured me, my activism has changed. I went from an angry (and scared) young person, full of righteous indignation, to a much more humble and strategic old man. Activism has become more about how I engage in daily life. Now, all of my actions happen here where I am. I am the agitator and the agitated.

There is a split in the activist community, a painful and debilitating one. The fault line seems to run between those out on the protest lines, and those in, looking at their own culpabilities. These two distrust and undermine each other, and even deny that they are related. This hurts the coherence and effectiveness of movement. It has become a great source of pain for me, hearing anyone disparage someone else. The inner and the outer are both part of the same continuum. Cut either one of them off— devalue any expression of peace — and you have a differing, but equally unjust, form of oppression.

It has taken me a long time to learn that lesson. I didn’t have, what I call now, the ballast of maturity to keep me from acting in a distorted way. My behavior, in addition to inadvertently aiding what I fought, was frequently unjust. That pains and humiliates me. Because of the pain, humiliation, and loss to my self-image, I have come to realize how hard it is to see the cost of this one-sided approach. I really despair when I perceive activists treating each other as if there is only one right way to engage. And, I don’t know how to tree-sit the tree sitters.

So, here is the essence of this message. I am flabbergasted about how to proceed. It took me a long time to learn about the value of integrating inner and outer. I think others deserve the same chance to learn, in their own time. But, waiting around for others, to age into a different perspective, adds to the fire, the perception that the fire brigade is caught up in shooting water as much at each other, as at the fire. This awareness is hard to bear. So, I reach out, and write about this dilemma, because I hope others will perceive it, and also speak out, and I hope that in some way, I can shorten the learning time of those I pray for.

I have learned to live a life that is filled with tension. The central reality of my time, here on Earth, has been the paroxysms of pain and disappointment about the degradation of our home. It violates the environmental ethic I picked up as a boy: “Leave the campsite better than what you found.”  I am not in favor of mass suicide. Nor am I in favor of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Some of us are have learned to be persistent, patient, and pained. The world — our birth place — is calling. It is praising those who feel moved to help it, and it is exhorting them to come to the task naked, shorn of human certainty.

Aging has taken away my activist’s clothes. It has left me naked, wrinkled, stooped, and still alive, perceiving the miraculousness of this creation, and calling out with the world. Life has come, is here, and will go. Now is our chance to provide the honor it deserves, and we can best do that, through honoring each other.

*          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *

For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com (2010 thru 2013) and http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com  (2014 on)

To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net