Over the last couple months, I have changed. I cannot say, with all honesty in mind, that the metamorphosis that I have undergone has not been painful. I kind of half smile at this but I have long been a person who failed to cry. As a child victim of abuse, frequently mocked for any "crocodile tears" that I shed, I had learned not to cry. The number of times that I have cried have been slim. I could go whole years without shedding a single solitary tear, no matter the circumstances, no matter what happened. I cried so infrequently that when I did, it was extremely painful--the salts filling my eyes burning the sclera to a torturous beet red. The slow solitary ones would burn my skin, etching red marks across pale tender flesh that would last until I washed them away. This fall, my lack of tears irrevocably changed. I cried not once a day. I was crying every day, multiple times a day. I cannot express how much it hurt but then, came the day where my tears no longer hurt, no longer burned. My eyes and skin had finally built up a tolerance to the salts within my tears or perhaps I had cried all those built up salts out until the salt composition of my tears became diluted enough to reach a point where they reached a natural state, no longer burning. After one month of tears, my tears stopped flowing. I had witnessed the destruction of all that I thought I knew, all that I had made unexamined presuppositions about, and was forced to acknowledge what it actually meant to be human. I became human again.
I had found deep compassion within myself where I know now that it had been wanting. Some might contest this as I have been told, time and time again, that I am the "nicest person that they had ever met". However, what I am saying here is, out of necessity, being said in all truth and honesty. My compassion for my fellow human being was wanting. What was probably most frequently mistaken as compassion was more of a sense of righteous indignation more than anything else. A sense of justice as opposed to forming a connection between one heart to another. I cannot point at any one instance over the past few months and say, "this moment, this sight--this is what caused me to change". It would not be true. All I can recollect, among the diverse, thousandfold of images forever emblazoned in my mind, is hearing Martin Luther King, Jr's voice, "I come to you in this magnificent place of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice". Or how sometimes it was changed to Mario Savio speaking of how "the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can no longer take part. You can't even passively take part." It's funny but I have had these words echoed in my head so many times that I don't need to look up on Google what it was that they precisely said. If there is any fault in quotation, it will be minor. They are words that have rung in my ears consistently, pervasively, and, soothing me in my woes where I, too, became sick at heart. Where I, too, could no longer do anything but act as my own conscience dictates.
A year ago, I would have said that I was acting as my conscience dictates every time I tossed something in the recycling bin or donated a bit of change to whatever charitable organization Safeway had chosen to promote. I would say that I was acting as my conscience dictates when I made my prior vlogs about what I was seeing and learning in my classes as a School of Business major. I would say now that would not be true either for what conscience requires in order to be truly followed is compassion.
There is a difference between a statement of fact or a warning given and one where I go from word to action. Acting as my conscience dictates has become no longer becoming a part of the system that I simply rebuke in a vlog. It's eliminating myself as being a part of the problem. Where I once looked at labels to determine the salt content of whatever it was that I bought out of a desire to protect damaged kidneys, I now look at them to see who it was that made the food product. Who is it that I am funding. I can't even remember the last time that I looked at the sodium content of a product, which is ironic for someone who has had to guard her kidneys for 15 years. Ironically enough, I have never felt better. I no longer retain water on a rampant, grotesque scale. My problems with ascites is now gone.
Acting as my conscience dictates, I could not, without immense distaste, participate in the usual crazed shopping spree of gifts that I knew that my children would not really use this last Christmas season. If I care about this planet, if I care about the people living on this planet, if I truly care about the world that I want for my children, then how could I, with good conscience, be a part of consumerist excess? Instead, I talked to my children, really spoke with them and told them what was within my heart. With tears of happiness and contentment, we chose to give away our Christmas. We would each get a gift that was something that we truly could use or desired and wouldn't become some object that would be buried within a closet or drawer. The rest of what we would normally spend, we would give away. Our combined conscience left us no other choice, now poignantly aware of our fellow human beings' suffering. We couldn't simply stand idle. How could we enjoy our Christmas when we knew of others whose hearts were breaking in the face of a seemingly cold and unfeeling world?
It may seem odd to imagine, for some, to watch children open a single present under the Christmas tree and be content but that was our home on Christmas morning. There we sat on the couch together and we spoke of the family that we chose to help and the smiles that we had brought to others that day. We smiled and cried a little. It was our best Christmas morning ever, one that we'll never forget. It was not a showing of charity that we gave, buying gifts for some unknown stranger that we would never have a face for. Within charity, there is a disconnect. An inevitable distancing between you and the recipient. With so many in need, we did not have to look far to find suffering and it was not charity that we offered. It was the love and appreciation of our fellow human beings and true friendship that we offered instead. It's almost tragic that it felt monumental to do, that those who knew of it responded with indrawn breaths of half disbelief and wonder.
What we did, we will never see as great or amazing for we simply became the people that we were supposed to be. That, which had long been hard wired within humanity that drove us to form communities and civilization in the first place. What has died within today's world has been that sense of community and compassion. It's no great surprise that these things have died when our culture has become one of struggle and a race to the top. I do not believe, however, for one moment that our society has become a society of rampant psychopathy. I choose, instead, to believe that each one of us, no matter how we bury it, still holds within them love for their fellow human being.
So, as my conscience dictates, I write this with all my hopes and with all my love. The word "activist" has become so polluted in today's world and engaged with ideas of radicals and fundamentalists. Activism, however, derives its meaning from action. I act as my conscience dictates. I have become activist without holding up a sign or shouting from a street corner. My activism, instead, is in one that fills my life on a daily basis. It embodies the choices that I make with a keen awareness of the effects of those choices I make upon others. If one wants society to change, then one must first become the change that they wish society to embody within itself. Change can come through pain, awareness, or inspiration but change will be inevitable.
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