G

I have been wondering lately about greatness.

About what denotes greatness, what creates it, what inspires it, what embodies it, what expresses it. Correctly, if such a thing is possible.

I have wondered after its commonality, about our generalizations about it, about our ambiguity towards it, about our standards for qualifying for it.

What is greatness, I would like to know.

Speaking in terms of size, I immediately think of massive galaxies, terrific expanses of sky, mountains upon mountains, heights and masses, miles and miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, or not see at all.

Is this great?

When I think of greatness in relation to power, I wander towards strong leaders, decisions affected, physical might, religious movements, taking stands, fasting, prayer after prayer after prayer.

Or is it ability? Is it to do something with greatness? With great leadership or agility or grace? Is it the talent for a specific trade or craft? Is it quantities we can we impressed by? Is it a quality of intricate and intrinsic goodness?

Is goodness greatness?

Can what is great ever be concentrated, dependent on, or in spite of what we find good?

What then can we really mean by this word? Its undeniable vagueness, its tip-toeing around definitive meaning, switching from one side to the next, as soon as we tend to understand, changing everything right under our noses.

I couldn't really say. So far, I'd say there is little I understand about the vastness of greatness, let alone the vastness it is able to describe. What can we call great? And after that, the question still lingers: are we even right?

I wouldn't say I was perfectly content in all areas of life until I started fussing over these questions. I've spent many insomniac-driven nights staring at my ceiling over nothing at all, let alone over a racing mind that never tires. But I also would not say that I am sorry it was brought to my attention, whether deliberately or not. Having recently been burdened (or maybe, blessed) with the task to achieve greatness, (with perfect and sincere certainty, at that), I have been forced to consider what that means to me, if anything at all. And for what it then means, if those things are what I believe I am capable of obtaining or being or living for. From there, I've drawn blank after unrelenting blank.

And each questions seems to be followed by another, quite equally unanswerable in any particular way. For example, what if what I consider greatness is not especially great to anyone but myself? Will I have achieved in spite of, or should we all suddenly start feeling very foolish for wanting what we want? (Note the question on question tactic.) For a second, it doesn't matter. All I can say is, we've hit a snag. And I don't really know if we can expect to reach the bottom of anything before this has pulled further and further, unraveling down to nothing but a jumbled pile of threads on the floor.

I don't know that it's necessarily fair to ourselves, or anyone, to judge our best moments by what we've accomplished. Rather, what might matter more is how hard we've tried. I have failed at more than I have conquered, but the times where my efforts have been most valiant shouldn't be ignored by what I wasn't able to rise above. Should they?

I really don't know. I'm merely suggesting that we 360 our thinking for as long as we can stand it, maybe just long enough to notice what we've missed, or never knew.

There is greatness in sadness. In everyday existence. In huge accomplishments. In silence, in solitude, in empty space. All these things have a place to be defined by greatness. So what then are we so worried about?

Everything is not great, and yet I tend to think that anything could be, if given proper space to expand or ruminate or settle. This is not to say that we celebrate every small mediocrity, that we worry about hurt feelings, pat everyone equally on the back, and look the the other way.

Greatness can be exemplified in the smallest way you choose to do something with exception. These are our every day tasks. And opportunities. We can think through our minor moments. We can challenge ourselves by them.

Still, I feel a slight concern that being charged with greatness, to achieve great things in great places, to be noticed, to show (I suppose) positive change, will leave my audience, however small, scratching their dizzy heads. At, first of all, my unwavering ability to waver. The big question mark that has become my face and mind, and in turn, most things I do. Some may conclude insanity, others, disappointment, in my ability to be classically accomplished or to even make much sense.

But it is fine. It is well, in fact. I understand what is expected. I'm just hoping for a little grace, and perhaps a little understanding of my own. I'm hoping for watchful eyes that recognize greatness in all of our efforts, in what we hope for, in what surrounds us, in the truly unexplainable.

For now, for me, this is a place to start.

For what?

Human simplicity = one baffled girl.

It is so easy to know better, and yet at the very same time to allow anything to change the way we see the world. It seems that almost nothing has to happen for us to hate what's before us, to question what we believe, to look around and seem disappointed. In the seconds following, the very same amount of nothing can dramatically move us to face the other way. We have given up power to everyone and everything. Suddenly the definition of who influences what and WHY (why matters) is hazy.

And I don't think that, or therefore we, make(s) sense. Either we're moody or not to be taken seriously. Or we flux with the weather. Or we expect too much and then forget what we wanted in the first place. We're a mess.

So if this is merely our emotions calling, wanting to know where we've been and if they might stop by, if they might move in, even, and take permanent and unforgiving root in everything we do, then I sense trouble. I foresee the necessity of unshakable faith, and in that very breath I doubt our ability to even recognize our mountain-moving abilities, even with every bell and whistle sounding high.

To be plain, I find this quite fucked up. Why not, right? It is not that we find the world inevitably evil or confusing, or because we have destroyed as far as the eye can see. It is also not because we have done anything good, whatever small thing we may have given back to this planet, this place, to each other. Essentially? We do not mean much. But, we mean. We intend, we indicate. We define in the midst of making the most of, and if we cannot do that joyfully, the least, at the very bottom of the edge of the end, we can do is be willful. We can live according to wanting to live.

Having recently been deemed emotional, such a thing I'd dare not argue against, I've (dangerously) tried to understand our constant persuasiveness, our minute-by-minute ability to flip out or close in or crack up or break down. And I don't care for it, to be truthful. I'd take comfort in a tad more predictability. Our variety and uncontainable attraction to it makes us a minefield of broken humanity. We have messed up, badly. We have stopped traveling, or never started. We have stopped standing still, stopped noticing, or never looked. We're twitching around, crying one minute and laughing the next, not making a molecule of sense with our life philosophies, with our mysteries, with our time. We're fretting over history or unfinished business, and in turn, ignoring what we may find before us.

Is it sad? Or is the irony, of even just that question, enough to make our hearts break in unison, a circle of paradox in the form of one long, resounding c-r-a-c-k.

Really, though. I think the only thing wrong with the way we feel things, the way we weigh a moment in the palm of our hand, fuss over it, dissect it, shred its remains, is that when all doors have been closed to it, when all the murmuring ends and when the split-second has gone by, we stay troubled. We still let what we've heard or seen or done, accidentally or otherwise, ruin what remains. Perspective, here and always, is key. We excuse our present condition by our past lives, by what has happened and what we have allowed to happen.

Maybe this. I don't really care for rain. It's untimely. It's ruined the best of our days, our plans that require sunshine, caused accidents, kept us indoors. But knowing, when it comes, how badly we need it? How that simple moisture enlivens our surroundings, looking out the window to the grayness, to the clouds, when thunder sounds and lightning blazes, even as I write this now, is not so bad. It's a temporary condition. We get through it. We are, to be quite dramatic, the better for it.

And when winter closes in again (all too quickly), and everything seems perpetually and possibly forever dead, some other month or moment will roll around and remind me that our world has not died, but merely slept, closed its wide eyes to find some time to dream. In this, there is solace.

There's a downpour, and there is a madness. And all it takes is one corner, one bend in the hypothetical (or perhaps actual) road. And we see that the sky has opened up again, seeming appropriately enormous, full of light, so much, in fact, that you can forget what light has ever looked like before, because here and now, with the still greyness floating up over our heads, is something new.

With this in mind, it would be in our very best interest, I boldly assume, to take our lights as they are given to us, to behold rather than belabor them. Living not necessarily as if it is out of our hands, as if we are victims, as if we have not chosen. And if we can, we might do our best to not bored, or lethargic, or disconnected. We can know what we want, but we must have what we have. No one's asking you to stop here and die here. And if anyone should demand such things of you, you are perfectly entitled to decline. And maybe everything has not gone step by frame by step. But it never does. And if it did, you would want other things.

I'm quite sure we're supposed to think about it. We're supposed to think about what we want without regreting where we now stand. We are to, in our meantime, while we continue to aim, while we keep one eye open, merely realize that our present is, well, present. And in that there is goodness. Unspeakable difficulty, at times, and most likely not at all that you'd imagined. It's rain, perhaps, but not only that. It's promise. It's a continuous resistance to that very human urge to gripe, to label, to over-condemn ourselves.

Make good. It's there to be found. Don't stay forever, if you can't, if you simply aren't able, don't want to, etc. But there's something to be said for deep breath taking.

Start slow. Then start again.

Circadian Rhythm, or what of it.

Every so often, I'm reminded.

Sometimes the things that we rethink, whatever minor memory has escaped us for so long, such an incident, a small but life-seizing interaction, can bring us to a place of relief. Of true gratitude for what we've overcome or learned or lived through.

We have all lived through without realizing it. It comes back to us someday when we are watching nothing or laughing loudly or checking time or sitting back. Suddenly we're transported, composed by our memory alone, gently lifted back to the time we found forgiveness or absolute fear or wondered if you would ever again feel anything but sadness at the thought of your own two hands.

We are reminded that we have survived peculiar feats, such specific pains that we were convinced, we were quite certain, from which we would never recover. But we have. In time, we have been eased backwards, we have felt less. We have moved on, we have bought new furniture, we have replaced loved ones, we have taken down photographs, we have let our histories gather dust beneath our present days, we have shut our lifetimes behind doors, we have looked forward forever, until now. Until the now where we are reminded of what we come from, of what we've needed thus far.

This is the type of release that surely may bring back whatever part of that pain remains. Perhaps just the stretch that it caused us to feel, the small ache of reaching for something, for another. There is ultimately more tragedy in what we can reach but somehow still fail to grasp.

When we are back to those moments of our lives, whether the song on the radio delivered us to it, whether it was the way you held your face against the window or the sound of faint conversation that brought you back, it may feel good to see the distance between where we stand and where we've stood. It's breathing. It's solace for time spent.

We can remember our pasts continuously. We can go by each day with a new memory, an I-haven't-thought-of-this-in-years situation, and there's an awfully good chance we'll never go back to it again.

Sometimes, however, the ways we are reminded are outside of ourselves, out on the edge of elsewhere, having to do with something much larger than our own inconsistencies, misgivings, aspirations. Who we've been is no longer relevant. We are. And we reflect. And we learn from the outside world; unrelated circumstances reveal themselves in full light. We have nowhere to look but directly into it, no matter where that leaves us.

And that, I must say, is much worse.

It is far easier to be embarrassed by our own faults then to face head on the faults of living that we exist in but cannot change.

We can rewrite where we've been. We can omit certain asides, we don't have to give it all up, we can broadcast our good points, we can pick our easiest flaws, if we're feeling honest. Who we are is our choice to reveal, to those we trust, or to no one at all.

But when reality reveals itself, uninvited and, on most occasions, unwanted, it's often ugly. It's harsh lines force themselves our way. We have to stare into what we know is there, what stands so blatant and upright before us, and say things like, this is how it is, we can't change this, or, should we dare: well, life's not fair.

It's maddening, yet undeniable. What diverts the fairness from reaching us? We can understand what fair would seem to be. We can dare to imagine what it would look like, somewhat gossamery, full of unknown light. We can expect all this with sincere earnest, we can truly believe in its possibility, however many times we've been let down before. And then a simple switch occurs, and suddenly we've lost our income, our lover, our hope. We've driven over a small creature, the smallest being that only meant to safely get from one patch of nature to the next, simply crushed under anybody's tires.

Then, what's fair?

When we're reminded of things such as this, what then should we believe in learning? More, pardon me, awful things such as, All things happen for a reason, may race to our minds.

I, for one, have trouble with such certain measure.

Yes, the cyclicality of life outweighs our ability to understand it.

Still. I'd like a little truth. As much as it would surely hurt, I would like to understand why we are where we are. What happens happens, whether to us or because of us, and fair does not become our situation, not often, not today. It's the pattern to our dilemma.

We merely pulse. Carry on. Repeat.

Time, Again.

For every one thing that we do with true excellence, I think there are a thousand blanketing things that we've done without interest or joy, no meditation, no attempt to learn. Done instead out of some insinuated necessity, but without wanting it, without taking it as part of our jumbled and purposed living.

So now we have to go to work, or to school, to jury duty, to cross the street. So shift it back.

And don't worry. I'm not addressing anyone but me. If you concur at all or nod along with me, if you feel even a touch of "Well, okay," then it can be for you, too. I won't mind.

And it's not about talent. Which of course, everyone has in one way or another. Sometimes it takes forever to tap into them, catch them, if you will, hone them, demonstrate them. But they are there, waiting to be discovered and exercised, sitting on the hind legs of their ability, ready to wave, here I am, can you see me now. They are the things we do with inherent skill, with a somewhat breathtaking ease, in a way that causes your audience, your world, to stop, to stir, to soak in your resurrection or dissertation or execution.

Perhaps your talents are quiet, buried. Maybe you are a natural in starting conversation. You can do handstands, make jokes, be sincere. Maybe you strike poetry in whatever you see. Perhaps you are patient.

We could spend our hours or our lives doing things that we're simply good at, but what exactly are we good for? Just because we may do something doesn't mean we should, or just because we are doing anything doesn't mean it's what we're intended to do or how we are meant to do it.

And I think that when this is the way we arrange ourselves, the way we set ourselves into molds we can certainly contort for but not quite capture. We end up waking up numb, traveling dead.

When Henry David Thoreau compared the killing of time to the permanent debilitation of eternity, I stopped. And each time some passing person has often commented, well, at least we're halfway through the week, or, can't wait until this year is over, or, one more day until the weekend, with lifted hands of hope, I've stopped. And I've been confused. And I have been torn in my response to these reactions. I've yet to understood why we've been encouraged to merely pass our lives. To skip ahead to the better points, to wish for forwarding along, for faster pace, for seemingly dull or uninteresting moments to simply go by unnoticed.

On that note, I find it difficult even to comprehend boredom. I find it inherently impossible. With a moving world, an earth that overflows with newness, a place that expresses its constant need for us to stand at attention. To be here, and to wish to pass time? To wish for the end of the day as a new one has just begun?

Something's wrong, then.

Something is wrong with the way we are cherishing (or not cherishing) what we have and what we are doing with it.

If we don't want time, then we have not used it well. We have not seen it, really seen it, as infinitely miraculous.

I propose that we love our Tuesdays with the same unabashed ardor that we do our Sunday afternoons. Let's love winter. After we are embarrassed by our mistakes, let's remember them. Let's not wait for another day to do what matters to us right now, to do what we appreciate, to exercise our right to (dare I say it) enjoy being alive. Whatever natural rules and restrictions are above you, whatever bookends hold you in a certain corner, if some constraint should tie you or toss you, digress. It is there, and it is purposed, hopefully. It has not come to stand in your way to be. Instead, it is part of your being, difficulty and all, it is your time, it is you.

So to pass time, to kill time even. Why want to get it over with before it has been loved? Endured, often, yes, but truly full, truly magnetized for what it has given you, not what it has taken from you, rejected of you, required of you.

If Thoreau understands that our time is intentional, and if nature beats on without asking permission, then what exactly are we waiting for?

Why are we the first to create the movement, yet always the last to get on board?

No, we aren't only supposed to forever sit in a basement just painting masterpieces. Though if that is your vestal need, hold on to it. Because the best part of living is that it is balanced, even without our even footing. I'm not suggesting that we live only for ourselves or only for what we deem entertaining or easy. I'm just hoping we can find what is good in what we go through, that we'll never reach a point where we sincerely wish for the end of something, wanting to wander ahead, wanting to do without, to only carry on.

Don't wait.

Don't miss this.

But don't wait.

Wild + Precious = ?

In the acknowledgement of absence, head bowed as it may be, there is this:

Lately, I've had a thing for deliberation.

We're not exactly serious yet, we would not dare to be exclusive. But we have met from time to time, over nothing or something, we have shared a history, a knowingness, often awkward but rather intimate encounters.

We have together faced thinking about consciousness, even while in and out of it. How often we've been faced with the odd necessity of decision, forks in the road, words to live by, having a toss-up, rolling the dice. Whatever dice, any dice.

With all of this, I speak only for myself to say I haven't come to any consistent conclusions, which I find is quite usual. What I have found in light of living deliberately, or with deliberation itself, in speaking of drive or even hope, I fear our similarities: that most of us will, eventually, have unknowingly or worse, contentedly, settled for less. We will have existed, even enjoyed, without awareness, without purpose or intention.

So now I'm uncomfortable. I'm on the very edge of the edge, looking from side to never-ending side, and I'm not sure if anyone's standing here with me. I'm dissatisfied with what we wish for and what we do not chase. I am relentlessly opposed to this general preparation for better, the need we have to start small and hope big, to wait and wait and wait until our patience or, pardon me, complacency, instead becomes the very rut where we build our lives, where we cultivate our dullness, where we go no further than our own four corners.

All saving and never spending. For what?

I don't want to be a hundred years old before anything actually happens. I don't want another year or moment to go by before anything actually happens. And wait wait wait. If we're going to talk about occurrences, we might as well breach the tragic predicament of plans. Yes, I've had a thing for plans, too. And though we've since called an end to our off-and-on rendezvous, our somewhat devastating decline got me thinking. I realized how attached I was to the idea of plans. To making them, to planning to make them, to planning how they would be executed. I was thinking about how, though I had no exact timeline in mind, I had certain expectations for the past twenty and the next twenty years of my life. There were marks to hit, give or take the time or schooling or money necessary. There were relationships to foster, roots to cultivate, bonds to break, bags to pack.

There was a world I hadn't seen that demanded my witness.

The funny thing about plans, though, is that they don't matter. Dreams matter, of course. Dreams matter more than anything else you can cling to, should you cling to anything, and I will argue that case with fervency. But plotting them out with any echo of rigidity, deciding when and where and how they will come to be, will most likely leave you hanging. It will make you wonder what went wrong, when really, things only happened. People left or came or securities fell through or guarantees were not so certain or other opportunities were suddenly popping their heads out of the ground, brand new blooms staring up, seeing nothing but sky sky sky. Promising better outcomes, fertile ground, new chances.

So things changed. So plans, whatever they may be, adapted accordingly. Not willingly, at times, but they fell in line, they digressed, they shifted. They sighed and allowed.

So when life intervenes, or excuses itself, or hounds you relentlessly, what will change? Or rather, what is worth changing? What has to happen in order to make you quit your vision, to give up what you really want in exchange for what's already here? What situations will reshape your wants, will make you look to around you, to your empty hands, to convenience and say, well, okay, well this will do.

When I think of these things, these questions that leave us feeling hunted and out of time, Mary Oliver seems to understand us. And by us I mean quite every human being, as we all go racing on and on. She tends to gather our dilemmas, sort them through her musings on nature and then redirect them: to give them back to us in new packaging, wrapped precisely with new hands and new eyes.

She asks so delicately, with such intricate inquisition and sincerity,

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

She acknowledges that you've made lists, that certain checkpoints gather more urgency, that you have general ideas, that you have strong dislikes. She senses our lives as irreplaceable and sweet, with an indelible importance, with equal purpose in what is simple and what is not. Wild and precious may be her biggest compliment to us all.

I don't think she's making fun of us. I think she really wants to know. I think she wants to know if you're going to make a sandwich or read the paper or think about your first love or swear up and down to never drink again. I think our plans, to her, and now to me, involve more than working up to achieve our biggest desires. She wants to know, but what about your every day existence, the ways in which we choose to spend our time, to bask in our time, perhaps our only time, perhaps the very last chance we will ever have to fall asleep on a rainy day or write a letter to a friend now living miles and miles and miles from where we happen to be.

I don't expect too much from anyone. Oliver, I truly sense though truly only guess, feels the same. I don't want to hear about how you will change problems or solve crimes or discover cures. Even though I know you will, it is okay if these things just happen, if we all live by daily choice, if we take the pressure off, if we breathe deep and keep going.

What we want matters. What we think we will accomplish can not only motivate us, but revive us, remind us that in any attempt to discover what we're here for, maybe what we want is all we have to give here and to each other, maybe our goals, however big or small, are our ways of contributing, of progressing, of shifting back, of sharing the weight of living.

So let's live.

Also, I thank you for your patience. Words are, delicately stated, as important as they are unimportant. To me, they are everything. I don't apologize; I continue on.

To Blog or Not To Blog

Okay, so more than one month since I've last done this means I'm officially slacking or unofficially stumped for original thought.

And here's what I think about that: slacking, in whatever sense of the word, is purely a situational and relative conundrum. What I mean is, what I may choose to be dragged down or distracted by might just add up to be another man's inspiration. So maybe these winter blues are beating the hell out of the sliver of my brain that remains creative, while the guy next to me can't get enough of these dreary skies and freezing temperatures.

Well, screw it, because original thought also chalks up to only being who said what and when they said it and what it meant for the time and what it meant later, if anything at all. So you might as well say whatever you want whenever you feel like it because whether it's a repeat or the first words ever spoken, someone has said it, someone will say it, so if it's how you feel, you might as well make one of those someones be you.

So my thoughts are still occasionally boring and I'm probably still shirking my personal responsibility as writer (yes, even as I sit here, writing this) by ignoring some bigger problem to instead record my latest bumbling musings in a blog. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with blogging, I suppose.

But I've been thinking. Often times people have described blogging as a way to get your work out there, even if nobody wants it. Meaning, have all sects of the writing industry rejected your many attempts at publication? Have you had many resumes, samples, and submissions go unanswered? Well, then by all means, blog it out, because now even if it still remains unread, at least it's out there in the universe, for anyone who may or may not stumble across it and may or may not be interested in what you currently find outrageous or endearing. (If I may: they will not, and they do not, by any means, more often than not, give a damn. Any industry related to expression requires honesty, even with yourself. Myself. You understand.)

Not that I'm ungrateful to the phenomenon of the instantaneous name-in-print situation. But I find it confusing. And tragically unsatisfying. Google, as much as I adore you for your ability to find me photo after photo of polar bear cubs, you are not the New Yorker. May it be known now and forever, this is not an equal substitute.

Really, though. Talk to any writers. If fact, talk to real writers, if you are lucky enough to know any and can also find them emerged in sunlight, (most likely only to be smoking nervously or pacing angrily), long enough to catch them in conversation. They don't have time for this nonsense. They have schedules. Certain times of day that are religiously and rigorously dedicated to their craft. It is not a hobby or a maybe or a side project. It is their drive, it's their life's decision, it's their way of picking up the world, tossing it around for awhile in their own senses, and telling us about what they've seen.

They have lives, too. Ways and times of observing, of recording, the hunt-and-gather process, the storing up for the dry spells, the winters, the blockage that so inevitably and so often comes. They prepare themselves to do poorly, to wake up feeling congested and overtired, to be running late getting the kids to school, to start eating badly and feeling ornery. They will have days of awful indecision, where the plot stays senseless, the characters elusive, the worlds crashing and the words not coming. These are the more common days of being a writer.

But. Should you get one awful and perfect truth, one sentence circling itself beautifully, once a month, once a year, it should be savored as solid and lucky and solitarily wonderful, because for all any of us know, it will be the last time anything says that particular thing in such an unforgettable way.

That, or tomorrow you will be cheated by some beady-eyed onlooker and all that discovery and explanation will be wasted on everyone but you, you the only one who knows how it actually happened.

In fact, this is why I have to believe that so many of our writers could not stand the world, or instead loved it so much that it hurt them to observe it, to be a part of it, to try to explain it to everyone else who wasn't paying attention. It's the handful of creative types that have to escape the world, I think. For their sanity. Or to embrace where sanity does not matter. Having these worlds constantly collide is an overwhelming task to take on. If anything, they chose to make things simpler, to return to the beginning. To lie intelligently, to rewrite their histories and then leave us, to give us something important and turn away before we knew to thank them.

So it doesn't make much sense. And I feel that it isn't supposed to. If your mark is as big as a thumbprint, then it matters. And if it's out there on the internet and one person finds you astounding to the twelve who only shrugged, then it's important.

And if all you can do is express yourself in the dark, repeat someone else's mystery, wonder about the meaning of things, if it cures your insomnia or eases your mind, it is, and remains, vital to us all.

Something About Doing Something

Let's see, let's see.

I'm thinking about striking out with an extremely delicate topic, and the instant advice that I give myself is: watch my words.

Then again, if the topic is delicate and the words are the same, then I'm not sure we're giving needed notice to an often skirted issue. We're not giving it any fight. We're just looking just over the top of its head, muttering under our breath, calling it taboo or messy, and moving on.

If you don't mind, because I certainly don't, I'd like to stick on it, this soon-to-be-named topic, for just a second. I'd like us all to be appropriately uncomfortable for about a minute and a half, or however long it will take you to skim through this. (A minute and a half assuming that a. you will either skip the boring parts or b. stop reading because you're pissed or hungry or something).

Ready?

And the subject is: passivity! Which, should you need an exact definition, is the act of accepting or allowing what happens or what others do without active response or resistance.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it. To mention a dirty (or maybe just confusing) word, to define it openly, to announce it's pertinence in today's post.

I get that this topic is a little scabby, that it's not something we're all that good at sitting still about. It's even a little awkward. And it's certainly a little personal, considering it could be spun towards topics of war and such, a subject that isn't likely to leave our lips and minds anytime soon.

These things thoughtfully in mind, I'd like to dig into that word. And by that I mean that I want to get to the root of its meaning, to the heart of its practice (or lack of practice, whichever makes more sense). Not the actual, genuine Greek roots per say, but. You know. I'm saying there's a problem here, and I'm attempting to start digging towards the bottom. I want to figure out where it began and how it justifies itself and where it appropriates its appearance.

What originally got me thinking about this notion of passiveness, in comparison to activeness, is the current book I am reading, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I would normally say "the book I am enjoying" rather than reading. And though I intensely enjoy reading, especially when the words are that of Safran Foer's, his honest (and dear God, yet again necessary) unveiling of the cruelty behind factory farming falls far below enjoyable. Though his words, as always, resound, a more appropriate description of my reaction to every other page would be heart-brokenness, some confusion, extreme nausea, and anger anger anger.

Basically, Safran Foer wants to know, and therefore writes to find out, what we should think about eating animals. He wants to know why it's socially acceptable to eat a dog in parts of Asia, but that in North America (where it is actually legal in forty-four of the United States) it would be considered gasp-worthy, shameful, perhaps even (to some) grounds for prosecution. He wants to know who determines the edibility of certain species, and how. He demands answers and adjustments for how factory farmers house and feed their livestock. He wants to know why we're treating living objects like corporate material. He wants to know why we feel comfortable raising a life-turned-machine merely to provide bacon for our Sunday brunches, drumsticks for our dinners.

I'm only a third of the way through the book. And already I'm squirming. Which is okay. In fact, I expected it. I knew what I was getting myself into. I was aware of what was likely to happen, and I tried to remain unafraid of that. It's hard to prepare yourself for change. It's hard to say to yourself, Okay, this could very likely turn something I accept into something I question, but I'm looking to grow, expand my horizons, see another point of view. I'm willing to admit that maybe I'm not right.

I wouldn't consider myself a radical in any sense. I'm not a member of PETA. In fact, I ate turkey chili just the other day. I'm not saying that eating a steak for dinner is getting you sent to hell. In fact, I'm not even meaning to write about whether or not we should eat animals. (Though probably, at least once I'm halfway through the book and the question becomes too overwhelming to ignore, I will probably have a thing or two more to say/wonder about it). I get that factory farming provides more affordable food for people. I also get that our country is grossly over-provided for. I get that traditional family farms have become nearly obsolete. I also get that a chicken should never be "produced" simply to live in and never leave a 67-square-inch pen, be scientifically processed to lay eggs round the clock, urinated on, have its beak cut off and/or then sent directly into a machine much like a wood chipper, while live, because it was eventually rendered useless. In case you aren't sure, 67-square inches is about the size of half a shoebox. And yes, there have been recorded cases of slaughterhouse employees pissing on already heavily abused livestock.

Seriously, that's about as much as I can give you on that topic so far. But it's going to come back up. If that alone isn't enough to get you thinking, then I guess you can just skip that future post, whenever it comes around.

Anyway; what I'm wondering about this time is how we react to things like this. To hearing these facts, to knowing what's really going on, to even sometimes seeing with our own eyes the indiscretions that often times go under the radar, that have people craning to look the other way. (Don't worry; though the eating animals question is a big and important one, this is where I'm starting to direct this towards all situations where we have a choice to do something or not.)

So I guess that's it: to do or not to do. What will "doing" something actually cost us, what will the results be, if any, will there be any progress, will it take much effort? Will it actually matter?

I think that our education, however we choose to take it, lends a realm of responsibility that, if denied, turns into instant progress of fear, of laziness, of a hoping that someone else will do the dirty work, someone else will deal with the raging mob. But if everyone else is waiting for your move, and if you keep waiting for a sign that it's safe again, we're looking at a dramatic decrease in belief, in the right to say, Here's what I think, and here's what I'm going to do about it. Suddenly it will seem pushy to have an opinion. Suddenly everyone that has an idea is a raving loon, certainly certifiable and, in most cases, quite mouthy.

I knew that picking up this book meant I was going to learn a lot of really disgusting things. A lot of awful facts about diseases, about malnutrition, about abuse. I was even told, by several people, that they knew I was going to want to change after reading it. I was told I would feel guilty, upset. Enough so that I would be inclined to change my habits.

I'm worried that these people had too much faith in me.

I haven't landed on either side of the line yet. But that isn't the point. The point is the information is out there now. The startling and often times unbelievable information is in my hands, between a hardback kelly green dust jacket. And what I'm starting to think is this: I don't know if we should be willing to learn the truth if we aren't willing to work with it. (Again, going beyond the dilemma of an omnivore's lifestyle.) We shouldn't ask for the facts if we're just going to shrug and resume. I'd like to know that you still bought chicken from your grocery store because you weren't aware of the automated "throat-slitter" they are put through, often times still fully conscious, rather than because you just simply couldn't give up McNuggets.

If you aren't aware of something, no one can expect much of you, right?

Well. Right. To a point. There are some issues that people would be shocked to hear you weren't informed of. The loop of Catch-22 type drama has never been more abundant. Still, a lot of times we ignore the news or the headlines (or the animals) because we don't want to have to do something. We don't want to know what we can't afford to invest. We don't want to donate, we don't want to spend time, we don't want to worry, we don't want to flex a little, cut back, put forth, speak up.

And nobody wants some pushy picketer shouting in their face. No one wants dead raccoons in their office or blood smeared on their furs. Punching people in the guts with your beliefs isn't really going to get you anything but a lot of enemies. If I know anything, no one likes to be told how to live.

I'm not saying that doing something means you become one of those people. Your heart, if it's going to be at all protected, should probably steer away from your sleeve vicinity. Your changes should change your life. If they can change the circumstances, fantastic. If they can make a tiny dent in some crater of a problem, it matters. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself. Often times, that's where our lack of active is born and buried. We're all ready to start forth, to have a brand new day. Until we buy clothes made in a sweatshop, or food from a factory farm, or ignore the evening news for a Gilmore Girls rerun.

This is our world. We're entirely responsible for this shit that we seem to be up to our necks in. And don't be confused, I'm not a good person. I make a lot of phenomenal mistakes, and writing this has mostly been a pep talk for me to move on to the next chapter of Eating Animals. Admitting that something needs to be done is beyond easy. Doing something, even if it's a change only you can see, is what's going to take everything you've got.

I'm not ready for a lot of things, I admit. Being informed carries the weight of being motivated in an exceptional way. And some days we have to fight for that, if only that. What comes next is preparing for the change and preparing for it to hurt. We need to brace ourselves to be uncomfortable, to say what we really mean, and to accept being disagreed with, looked down on, brushed aside.

If I become a vegetarian after I finish this book, a lot of people are going to think that's stupid. Some of them while knowing all the exact same things I will, some of them knowing nothing at all about it. Some people will approve, some people won't care.

What I'm saying is, this doesn't matter. Whether or not you do something isn't so you can have a band of followers or someone to discuss your beliefs with. While that would be nice, and while it does exist at times, this is a purely ridiculous reason for incentive.

If you do something small, something that only you may notice, this is action, as far as I'm concerned. It's not changing the world. But it's making a small difference in your own. It's not obnoxious (hopefully) or forcing someone else to agree with you by attacking them (again, really never the way to go if you're looking for someone to hear you out). I mean, of course, you are completely entitled to discuss your beliefs with those around you. This is, in fact, what I'm doing right now. And I'm not the type to shy away from disagreement. I just feel like to passively accept something means we're going to take it lying down. We're just going to allow disasters and sigh over them a bit, shake our heads in disapproval, and trot along, looking for another thing to be disappointed over. Until then, however, we'll just decide not to mind.

But I mind. I mind that animals are mistreated. So if all I can do is no longer choose to support such an operation, then I guess I've gone from passive to active.

You do something you believe in because, just that: you believe it. You have learned, and you sense a required change. So you make the change, and you stick to it. Or you try. Either way, what you learn should be determined by what you are willing to do about it.

So far, what I'm willing to do is keep reading. After this book, probably others. If you decide that you're open to the knowledge, be open to what it's going to bring you to, be open to that being difficult and untimely.

It is, after all, almost Christmas. I guess I'll be skipping the ham this year. That is, in case it turns out I'll be giving it up for good.