From “Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion When Cruelty Is Trending” by John Pavlovitz
I don’t know what matters enough to move you from complacency or indecision or selfishness or apathy:
The human rights atrocities
The perversions of Christianity
The pillaging of the environment
The constitutional violations
The cries of migrant children
The Supreme Court hijacking
The attacks of public education
The dismantling of health care
The antiscience conspirators
The school shootings that go ignored
The LGBTQ teenagers being harassed
The assaults on women’s autonomy over their bodies
The malice of our public servants
The twisting of objective truth
The Nazis marching in our streets
The dumbing down of our discourse
I don’t know what grieves you most right now – but you do
So instead of lamenting how horrible it all is, decide to make it less horrible.
Instead of looking to the sky and wondering why no one is doing anything, you do something.
Do it in the small, close, here, now, and doable of your daily existence where you have both proximity and agency.
Step out of the cloistered place of your private despair and into a small world that you can alter by showing up.
Use your gifts and your influence and your breath and your hands – and fix something that is badly broken before it breaks beyond repair.
Affirm life, speak truth, defend the vulnerable, call out injustices – and gladly brave the criticisms and the wounds you sustain in doing it, knowing that they are a small price to pay for the nation that could be if you speak – or the one that will be if you do not.