On Thursday, I introduced you to Hillary Rettig's book, The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way. Today I'm going to talk about the challenges I face in integrating activism into my life. They differ from the ones she addresses in her book, but her approach is still helpful to me.
It's hard to find a volunteer opportunity that simultaneously:
- involves working with people one likes
- calls on one's strengths
- lets one contribute chunks of time that fit around around one's other commitments
- finds a nice balance between bursts of activity and "downtime"
- makes one feel essential without being the only one keeping things running
- allows one's efforts to be recognized
- supports a purpose that one feels is important
- does not feel like a hopeless cause
Hillary (whom I'm calling by first name because I've met her in person) aims her book at idealistic people who have trouble recognizing that they have the right to demand that these requirements be fulfilled. By contrast, I already am comfortable with demanding those conditions. I just find it frustrating when they're not met.
The problem of incrementalism comes up everywhere. Even in writing a blog entry, one needs a certain minimum amount of time to express the basics, even if one is planning to add more later (either by updating the post or by continuing the discussion in a new post).
Speaking of which... it's time for me to bring the discussion to a pause for the day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment