resolved; resigned; resisting

Three things on a Tuesday
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1.
In the early Nineties sometime I had an epiphany while standing at a counter waiting to be helped. I was feeling tired and rushed and pressured ("join the club," right?) and I almost -- I had an impulse to snap at the person behind the counter. ("You're gonna hafta hurry UP!") Something like that. I caught myself, and thought about how happy and excited I was at that moment in my life, to be doing the work I was doing at the time. (Lobbying, State Legislature.) I thought about how grateful I felt, for my career and for other things -- interesting people I was meeting, blah-blah-blah.

And I resolved to never snap at anybody like that, or even to consider doing it -- I worked to extinguish the Idea of ever snapping or bitching. (Getting rid of the idea is harder.) But at least a person can always Select how they're going to act. I thought, "I am so grateful for the career I have, I don't ever want to be less than polite and kind to anyone who has a less interesting and exciting job than mine, and anyone who is likely making less money than me."

This realization and personal resolve sort of meshed, in my imagination, with the idea that there's so much you cannot change or improve in the world, in life, all you can change is yourself. So then if you Live that, you've done something.

(Was thinking just the other day -- sometimes if you can't eradicate the Bad, at least you can Not Do it. Resist all the negativity. "Just say no," as Nancy Reagan used to say....)

2.
A co-worker resigned from his job; he was thinking about (and therefore experiencing) only the negative aspects. I was trying to talk him into seeing other aspects -- the good things, and other points of view. (I must have said "other aspects" several times because he finally admonished me, "No -- there are no other aspects"...)

Then today I read this (#3) and it expressed what I was trying to say -- part of it -- to my co-worker --

3.
[a quote from Howard Zinn] (Howard Zinn was a professor at the university I attended -- met him once, never took a class from him -- should have, but you can't get 'em all -- when he was introduced to me & learned where I was from, he immediately wanted to talk about the American Indian...)
here's Zinn quote:
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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.
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[Howard Zinn, The Optimism of

Uncertainty: The Nation, 9.20.2004]

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