What 3.5% of us can do
Engaging through hope and beauty
Note to everyone: Take care of yourself … if that includes unsubscribing or deleting posts that add to your distress, do it. I completely understand.
Everyone has their own way of coping … some of you may need to look away and focus your attention on other things … those things are just as important a part of the resistance as marching, rallying, and obsessing about what they’ve done now.
My way of coping is to write my way through these strange times and try to find the “why?” in things that seem to make no sense, so most of my posts for the foreseeable future will be political.
Rebranding: obviously “Wild Beauty” is a misnomer for what I’m writing these days. However, making time for beauty is pure therapy when things have gotten ugly, so beauty will remain a critical part of my own journey and a part of this newsletter.
Because I believe we are going to come out of this time with some scars, heartache, and a lot more wisdom about the country we want for the children of our future, I’m going to focus on hope and am in the process of rebranding to “Voices of the hopeful.”
Staying hopeful is one powerful way to be engaged in this challenge. And, apparently it only takes 3.5% of us!
The first hopeful voice I would like to share is Howard Zinn’s, an American historian and playright who was influenced greatly by World War II and his experience as a bombadier.
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." -- Howard Zinn
Read more here:
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
I would love to hear what’s helping you cope in these strange times.
I love the rebranding. It's a soothing title.
You need to write what you need to write, and yeah if others don't agree they just have to close the tab and not bother reading it, I do that sometimes I will start to read a post and decide it isn't something I want to bother with and close it and move on and the next day the same blogger may have a post I am really interested in, that's life.
I do not understand why some people get their knickers in a twist over something some one has written, don't read it or read it and if they really need to leave a comment how about simply I disagree and move on.