Christina H
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Remember Boston Strong (the bombing), Houston Strong (the hurricane), Florida Strong (the other hurricane), Puerto Rico Strong/Fuerte (the other other hurricane), Vegas Strong (the shooting), and who knows how many others? By the time this column is published, every inch of the world will likely need its own Strong campaign (and some places more than one).
Can I, as one astonishingly normal human being, make a dent in all of that? Every positive action feels like trying to stop a forest fire with a water balloon. Not only is it ineffective, but neighbors are now laughing and recording with their phones. How do you keep plugging along in the face of a terrifying wall of encroaching hellfire?
I think I know a way.
In modern America, the only thing worse than a dick is a self-righteous dick. These are the people whose every good deed is done loudly, in public, and only for the applause. They are the bane of charities everywhere. Soup kitchens have to beg people to not just show up at Thanksgiving and quickly leave after taking some selfies dipping food for the homeless. One shelter Cracked talked to made volunteers work a minimum seven-hour shift to prevent that kind of "showed up just long enough to prove I'm great" tourism (parents particularly love dumping their kids off for an hour during the holidays so they can boast to other parents about the important lesson they taught them).
And remember when Donald Trump did a photo op in Puerto Rico after the hurricane, tossing a roll of paper towels into the crowd so everyone would give him credit for doing his part?
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters"Give me back what's left of the roll when you're finished."
How we collectively react to what happened in 2017 -- all of it -- will determine what the future will look like. Looking around, it seems like a lot of the social pressure pushes us toward inactivity in a lot of subtle ways. It can even sound like activism. ("Why bother giving a SANDWICH to A HOMELESS CHILD when the very act of BUYING THAT SANDWICH supports CAPITALISM?") You can wind up insisting on a standard that says anything other than a total overthrow of the system is futile virtue signaling.
For example, I always wanted to share my story above with other people outside the church group, but felt weirdly embarrassed doing it, like a celebrity going, "I'm so stressed out about this school for girls I just started in one of the poorest countries in Africa. I don't know if I'm changing enough lives!" Some of you probably have that reaction to me telling the story just now. ("Did you just call three struggling human beings your 'emotional reward' a few paragraphs ago? Isn't this whole article an excuse for you to boast about what a great person you are? Probably to cover for horrific crimes you commit behind closed doors?")
But I'll admit: I partly do it because of how it makes me feel, because I have found that when it comes to coping mechanisms, this blows everything else out of the water. And damn, are coping mechanisms important right now. When you see that creeping fire swallowing up everything that is good in the world, you either want to give up or lash out -- either through violence or indulging in confusing performance art and getting into a weird arms race with trolls.
Shia LaBeoufActually, what did happen to Shia LaBeouf?
Yes, it's still important to do the boring stuff, to go to city council meetings and circulate petitions to stop putting starfish bait on beaches or whatever is causing this weird problem, and to persist through years of frustrating inaction (the council is in the pocket of Big Starfish Bait). But it's also important to go out to the beach once in a while, pick up a starfish yourself, look it in its metaphorical non-Cronenbergian eyes, and hurl it magnificently into the ocean. For it, and for you.
That starfish story pales in comparison to what the rest of those "Chicken Soup For The Soul" books have. Check one out today.
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