Olu Online

a little or a lot?

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"NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us shoving at the thing from all sides to bring it down" — diane di prima

i struggle a lot with feeling like i am too small and/or powerless to make any difference to anything that bothers me. i also struggle a lot with feeling like i have a make a huge and lasting change to the world for my life to have been worth living at all. maybe ONE of those in a lifetime would be bearable? together it's two unruly apex predators in an enclosure too small even for one.

there's a tiny (and mercifully shrinking!) part of me that is still attracted to making a ton of money (and other effective altruist nonsense, i say, a garlicky guard against energy, money and intellectual vampirism) to achieve all of my goals in one fell swoop:

  1. get rich (which obviously involves fame or notoriety in some fashion, right?? you can name every rich person, right??).
  2. give away a load of money to good causes (which i am obviously in the correct position to fairly choose, and having lots of money will in no way affect my moral compass OR compromise the values of anyone who would be in need of money, right???).
  3. die of incredibly advanced old age at 150, surrounded by my closest friends and lovers, happy that i did all i could for life, liberty, justice and the flourishing of life.

there's another part of me that knows that even achieving the above wouldn't solve the feeling of needing to achieve, of needing to do more, even if i stuck to the plan exactly.

the same part also knows how hard it is to plan to get filthy rich, especially from my position of being black and femme coded (women get like 2% of VC funding so I'd have to have a stunning idea i could bootstrap?) and then i would also probably need to not be disabled, and in any way inclined to make "tough" business decisions?

the smallness in the face of the world's problems feels like it should be easier to shake in comparison. intellectually i think that it takes all sorts, that even the smallest drops in the oceans of problems we have can and do make a difference, whether because of an action itself or because of a change in attitude. just because it might seem pointless to you for me to do the things i do, doesn't mean they are, and often it will be all of us working together in our own ways that make a difference. or less wordily, not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer or an activist because then who will drive the buses, grow the food or tell the stories?

my therapist would definitely say it's one thing to believe it on paper and another entirely to believe it in your body, but writing it out like this does help.

how do you relate to "making a difference"? do you worry about being "too big" or "too small" to change things? let me know!

this is my fifth post in my writing month challenge, which i decided is "one post for each day of november".

if you liked this post, please:

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#ethics #writing-month