I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. Well, an epiphany for me, anyway: it may well already have been obvious for others.

I’ve been trying to do this thing for myself, at least once a week, where for around a half an hour, I just allow myself to accept and entertain the possibility that I might not be able to keep doing the kind of work that I do. I’m not doing this to be morbid, but rather, in the hope that if things do get to that point, it’ll be easier for me to deal with if I’ve come to some small level of acceptance in advance.

I’ve been reminded lately, that eleven years ago, I wasn’t in a dissimilar position than I may find myself in soon again. Having to close the crunchy, indie Kindergarten I’d run for nearly five years really gutted me. On the last day of school, I threw a big party for all the current and former students and parents, because I wanted the kids to have something happy to part with, not sad, but that day, every five minutes I had to walk away, go into the alley, and sob. I gave away most of our materials to the kids, partly out of generosity, but partly because I knew if I had them around, I’d look at them all the time and torture myself.

I had to do that largely because financially, there was no way to make things work without it a) either becoming unaffordable for parents because I needed extra space and help or b) seriously killing me because 80 hours a week on your feet, with no assistants, a majority of which were spent managing a group of small children is just something you can only sustain for so long. I even saw it coming over the last year, had tried various things to make it workable, but I was so in love with the job and the idealism of the thing (it was a vegetarian school, we had a kickass parent community, even including our own food co-op, we were trying to raise kids compassionately and peaceably, etc.), that I didn’t really visualize my life without it.

So, when the inevitable happened, it was really awful. I was beyond depressed for months, I felt like I’d lost this huge part of myself, and like I’d lost family, and to boot, I just felt like a complete failure (which is kind of a silly thing for someone twenty-six who started her first indie biz at 21 to feel like, but I had no hindsight at the time). So, if I get to a similar space again, I want to do everything I can to try and be smarter about it this time around and try and do some things to preventatively manage what would be a very serious heartbreak of an even greater magnitude.

On to my epiphany. A friend messaged me when I was in the midst of one of these meditations/visualizations, and made some noise that it wasn’t the best time to talk to me (I sit and weep when I do this: that’s fine, it’s catharsis, but it’s not pleasant to be around), but not enough noise, really. Truth is, I want to talk about this stuff with people, I just feel like a perpetual downer these days, and feel really guilty about burdening people with it. And so it got brought up, my malaise with this, and she mentioned that I couldn’t be a failure because many people consider me a (s)hero.

Forgive my bluntness — she did, she’s a peach, and she gets it — but being a hero to someone or even a lot of someones rarely pays the rent or puts food on the table. And right now, and at my age, I’d honestly easily give up any hero-status I may have for some form of reliable paycheck. I mean, it’s really nice, I’m not a complete asshole, nor an ungrateful louse, and it does makes me feel good about myself and what I do/have done.

But here’s the thing. I’ve come to the conclusion that much as is the case with artists, where they and their work are usually considered most valuable when they’re dead, that with actvists – and what nutjob decides to be both, anyway? Erm… – we are often considered less valuable, less heroic, if we have even the basic creature comforts that everyone else does. In a word, I think that people perhaps often confuse heroism with martyrdom.

I’m no Catholic nor a Christian. I’m Buddhist: our goal is to certainly accept that we all suffer, for sure, but we try to work to reduce the suffering we and others experience, not to elevate or celebrate it. I mean, I think Jesus was an incredibly cool guy, one of the all-time-greats, for sure, but I don’t think he died for anyone’s sins en masse or that his death or the way he died is anything to celebrate or idolize. I also have a really hard time believing that anyone would seriously ask someone to crucify them, even if they were batshit crazy or just totally worn out with being the Messiah (well, maybe that one I believe). I think he got screwed by a jealous ass and that that seriously sucks. And if that isn’t what happened, and in fact, Judas really was following Jesus’ directive, then it’s Jesus who was the ass, because that’s a fuck of a cruel position to put a friend in, man.

But enough about Jesus: let’s talk about me.

Well, in a minute. Instead of Jesus & Co, — and I’m hardly comparing myself to these folks, just looking for activists people know to talk about — I’m thinking about people like Aung San Suu Kyi, and the fact that from, where I’m sitting (which is not in Burma, so if I’m being inaccurate, please correct me), it appears that only after she was put under house arrest, and thus, laregly unable to continue to do the amazing activist work she was doing, did she get the big street cred and awards. Certainly, refusing to leave the country, which would have given her freedom, was an incredible protest all by itself, but so was the work she did which led her there in the first place.

I’m thinking about Martin Luther King, and the likely reality that had he not been assassinated, his profound achievements not only would have been less recognized, but in no short time whatsoever, the fact that he cheated on his wife, that he wore nice suits, or that he didn’t have to put his life at huge risk anymore would have overshadowed his incredible accomplishments.

I’m thinking about Phil Ochs, Nelson Mandela, Alice Paul, Medgar Evers, the current Dalai Lama, Harvey Milk, the works. And what I’m thinking is that without their martyrdom and their profound suffering (far more than mine, obviously; I’m just kvetching about having big troubles paying the bills and not having a segment of the population think I’m some sort of child predator: I’m certainly not grappling with being shot or imprisioned for years and years), their heroism wouldn’t be held up so high.

And I’m thinking that is complete and utter bullshit.

I’m thinking that that complete and utter bullshit has something to do with why on earth I keep finding it so hard to make ends meet when someone working at a fast food restaurant the number of hours I do often, say, has some sort of vehicle, and someone who sits on their arse in a cubicle all day getting paid for forty hours, with benefits, but really working maybe 20, is doing far, far better in just having some basic stability, security and quality of life than the both of us.

It’s become pretty clear to me over the years that a lot of people just figure that anyone who does any sort of activism, especially if they do it for their living, has made some sort of intentional choice to barely scrape by — or chose that because we somehow are trying to show others we’re better people than they are by scraping by — or somehow deserves to live poorly or at higher risks because we chose not to have “real” jobs, even if our work benefits those who have those “real” jobs, or fills in the gaps because those with the “real” jobs don’t have the time or wherewithal to tend to the stuff we are. There absolutely is plenty of commentary out and about which clearly states that full-time activists deserve to stay poor and struggle because we chose the “luxury” of doing work that we feel is universally important rather than the hellacious torment of a corporate job.

It seems clear, especially if I pay attention to what others say about people like me, that if I wrote my missives from a comfortable house that I owned, or had a car I drove around in, or talked about the kids I can’t likely ever afford to have at this point, by some, I’d be less of a hero; less of an activist.

It seems clear that if I didn’t sit here perpetually whinging about how much it sucks that forty is flirting with me and no matter how hard I seem to work doing things people say are important, I can’t squeeze even a dime for it from the majority of folks who talk about the value of what I do, I’d be less of a hero. That I’m considered more of one because someone can look up my woes about healthcare without insurance, see how low and exhausted I can get, how tough it is for me to get real credibility, or look back and read about the winter I had to post online to ask for someone to donate a coat for me for the winter because it can get just that bad. And that’s freaking lunacy.

This, for the record, is not intended to be any sort of guilt trip. Rather, this is me simply acknowledging pervasive attitudes that exist, and trying to desconstruct them in the hope of perhaps changing them, or at the very least, accepting them better than I do now. I’m trying to suss these things out because I’m in a space where I’m trying to look the life I have now square in the face and see if there is any chance of continuing to do things the way I do them — or continuing to be a full-time activist at all — but to also have some hope of some semblance of a basic, comfortable life. I’m wondering if the sort of attitudes I’m talking about aren’t a big (maybe the biggest? Maybe not?) barrier to that, because if they are, then it seems to me that I need to accept that there is only so much I can do to change them, and more realistically consider what I might need to do — not for the world-at-large, but just for myself — in that context.

Look: I grew up with the sorts of people I mentioned above as my heroes and sheros. When my friend I was talking to asked me who my own heroes were, I admit, I was loathe to roll out the list, because when you look at it, it seems pretty clear that from day one of my life, the role models and idols I’ve chosen aren’t just activists, but also martyrs. It’s entirely possible that I, too, am influenced by that conflation and confusion, even if I abhor it; even if I’d by all means prefer that more of my heroes were still alive than dead young and early, that they lived much more comfortably than they did. (Mind you, I’d rather have grown up with those folks as my role models than the vapid celebrities so many young people hold up, but still, it begs an important question about idols and role models.)

However bitter a pill it is to swallow, I’m glad, at least, that my brain is going to these places, because I very much need to think about them, very seriously, and pretty much now. It’s gotten pressing to do so financailly, it’s gotten pressing to do so emotionally, and since I’ve also found myself with a bonafide life-partner, there is that on top of it all. By all means, Mark knew pretty well what he was signing unto with me and what I do, but I also don’t want my work, my life, and my fallout from both to cause him suffering. There’s this activist/social work trap you can so easily fall into where you’re so invested in making huge groups or classes of people feel better, have better lives, so focused on the big picture that you get myopic about your own life, your own betterment, and with making sure the people closest to you are also okay, and that you’re not only helping them, but not making things WORSE for them by working so much to make things better for others (it’s something I also see a good deal of in feminism, too: there are some incredible activists who are doing great things for women-at-large, but who sometimes seem really inept or careless when it comes to maltreatment of the women right next to them). I’ve found myself in that place before with work and my interpersonal relationships and my own life, and I do not want to land there again.

I’m not sure what to do with this particular epiphany, where to file it, or where to go from here just yet. I’m just at the starting gate of sorting it all out, after all. So, I’m more aware of what part of this is likely about, acutely aware that I think it’s crap, and obscenely aware that I don’t want a cross on my back, because that’s just plain fucked up.

Well, you gotta start somewhere.

filed under Heather Corinna | activism | rantapalooza
posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

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