Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The Personal as Political, from Global to Local
Lately it feels like life is unfolding on three distinct levels. Let me give you a snapshot from each one.
On the global level, I am aware of increasing violence and dispair every day. Random missiles fly between Israel and Palestine, knocking out families on the beach or little girls on their way to school. Howls of vengeance rise up from the smoking ruins, and mingle with the screams of suffering civilians in nearby Iraq, where the killing of bystanders has become so routine the foreign press hardly bothers to report it anymore. In Guantanamo, desperate hunger strikers are tied to chairs and forcefed through their nostrils. Over in Africa, millions of children die each year from totally preventable diseases, while their parents succumb by the millions to the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
Then there's the national level. Here in the U.S. cancer is epidemic, asthma and diabetes are on the rise, and the drug companies are making out like bandits, selling us not only chemotherapy, bronchodilators and insulin, but also anti-depressants, sleep aids, and Ritalin by the ton for our stressed-out children. Wages are stagnant and consumer debt is ever-rising, as our taxes go to pay the war machine rather than the social good of our people. The politicians seem ever more plastic, ever less genuine--the real ones, like Howard Dean, who was accompanied on the campaign trail by a wife in sneakers, seem doomed to failure, while the most diabolical, like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove, go laughing all the way to the bank.
And then there's the personal level, where something totally different is going on. For the past couple of weeks I've been focused on celebrating my firstborn son's graduation from middle school (a big deal, as he's leaving the Waldorf school that has nurtured him since the age of three, the teacher who has guided him since first grade, and the classmates who have become his family). I've hosted my in-laws from Mexico for a week, and worked at odd moments to prepare my paper for the National Women's Studies Association convention, which I'll attend this weekend. I've been taking advantage of brief breaks in the prevailing rainy weather to plant my vegetable garden, weed out the perennial beds, and get some geraniums into pots on the deck, and I'm trying to find homes for the two affectionate, hungry stray cats that have taken up residence on my porch. Tonight I'll celebrate my mother's 66th birthday with her, and next week begins a round of routine doctors' visits for the kids.
Compared to the global and national levels, where everything seems to be spinning out of control, in a constant state of crisis, my personal preoccupations seem so middle-class and pedestrian. But I am also aware of working hard in my personal life to build a protective cocoon of normalcy, seeking to counteract the constant bombardment of negativity emanating from the larger world.
Psychologist Kaethe Weingarten of Harvard, in her book Common Shock, talks about how witnessing violence impacts us, even if the violence is not done directly to us. All of us who bear witness to the grisly battles unfolding on the world stage feel something akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome, she maintains, which we must work through and try to channel into positive action, lest it fester within us and turn to self-destructive poison.
I may not be out sabotaging whaling ships with Greenpeace, or blowing up SUVs with ELF, or even standing on the White House steps with the women of Code Pink, but I am with them all in spirit as I seed my cilantro and plant zinnias in the backyard, as I read a chapter from Narnia to my seven-year-old at bedtime, and drive my older son to a rendezvous with his very first girlfriend. I am constantly aware of my own miraculous good fortune, to be able to peacefully raise my family and plant my flowers while billions of people suffer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" on a daily basis.
It's clear to me that those of us who live charmed lives like mine have a responsibility to do our utmost to put our good fortunes at the service of others. We all have gifts to make use of and to offer to the world. And the world-- she needs us now.
On the global level, I am aware of increasing violence and dispair every day. Random missiles fly between Israel and Palestine, knocking out families on the beach or little girls on their way to school. Howls of vengeance rise up from the smoking ruins, and mingle with the screams of suffering civilians in nearby Iraq, where the killing of bystanders has become so routine the foreign press hardly bothers to report it anymore. In Guantanamo, desperate hunger strikers are tied to chairs and forcefed through their nostrils. Over in Africa, millions of children die each year from totally preventable diseases, while their parents succumb by the millions to the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
Then there's the national level. Here in the U.S. cancer is epidemic, asthma and diabetes are on the rise, and the drug companies are making out like bandits, selling us not only chemotherapy, bronchodilators and insulin, but also anti-depressants, sleep aids, and Ritalin by the ton for our stressed-out children. Wages are stagnant and consumer debt is ever-rising, as our taxes go to pay the war machine rather than the social good of our people. The politicians seem ever more plastic, ever less genuine--the real ones, like Howard Dean, who was accompanied on the campaign trail by a wife in sneakers, seem doomed to failure, while the most diabolical, like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove, go laughing all the way to the bank.
And then there's the personal level, where something totally different is going on. For the past couple of weeks I've been focused on celebrating my firstborn son's graduation from middle school (a big deal, as he's leaving the Waldorf school that has nurtured him since the age of three, the teacher who has guided him since first grade, and the classmates who have become his family). I've hosted my in-laws from Mexico for a week, and worked at odd moments to prepare my paper for the National Women's Studies Association convention, which I'll attend this weekend. I've been taking advantage of brief breaks in the prevailing rainy weather to plant my vegetable garden, weed out the perennial beds, and get some geraniums into pots on the deck, and I'm trying to find homes for the two affectionate, hungry stray cats that have taken up residence on my porch. Tonight I'll celebrate my mother's 66th birthday with her, and next week begins a round of routine doctors' visits for the kids.
Compared to the global and national levels, where everything seems to be spinning out of control, in a constant state of crisis, my personal preoccupations seem so middle-class and pedestrian. But I am also aware of working hard in my personal life to build a protective cocoon of normalcy, seeking to counteract the constant bombardment of negativity emanating from the larger world.
Psychologist Kaethe Weingarten of Harvard, in her book Common Shock, talks about how witnessing violence impacts us, even if the violence is not done directly to us. All of us who bear witness to the grisly battles unfolding on the world stage feel something akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome, she maintains, which we must work through and try to channel into positive action, lest it fester within us and turn to self-destructive poison.
I may not be out sabotaging whaling ships with Greenpeace, or blowing up SUVs with ELF, or even standing on the White House steps with the women of Code Pink, but I am with them all in spirit as I seed my cilantro and plant zinnias in the backyard, as I read a chapter from Narnia to my seven-year-old at bedtime, and drive my older son to a rendezvous with his very first girlfriend. I am constantly aware of my own miraculous good fortune, to be able to peacefully raise my family and plant my flowers while billions of people suffer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" on a daily basis.
It's clear to me that those of us who live charmed lives like mine have a responsibility to do our utmost to put our good fortunes at the service of others. We all have gifts to make use of and to offer to the world. And the world-- she needs us now.
