It’s been awhile since I’ve written. In fact I realized that I haven’t written anything really delving into my life, exploring systems of power, in months…basically since I’ve moved out here. It’s funny how quick I begin to take things for granted, friends, food, weather, community, passion, access to inspiration. I’ve only been out here a few months and it all feels common place. And shouldn’t it? Don’t we all deserve it? Isn’t it what we’re fighting for? But at the same time is it just to lose myself in a bubble of comfort and pleasure knowing that it’s the exception? Knowing that the rest of the world, my family, my friends, are still struggling? Still waking up everyday searching for something that they more than likely will never find? Is it just to remain in this false utopia knowing that? My first thought is no, my second is that I’m completely unwilling to leave.
I’ve been dating someone new for about a month now and I spend most of my free time with hir. I enjoy it, in fact I crave it, but I am left feeling acutely aware that time spent with hir is time neglecting other parts of my life. Mainly friends, roommates, the community center, and various other forms of self reflection. Part of me doesn’t care. Part of me is loving waking up with hir and kissing hir and pushing aside all the bullshit that weighs so heavy on my heart. But at the same time I’m left feeling guilty. So guilty I can hardly breathe sometimes.
Now it seems that many people in my life have a great deal to say about how I interact with the world and internalize the pain and struggle of those around me. In fact someone once said that they simply don’t have the energy to feel guilty about as much as I do. Don’t get me wrong I understand where this is coming from, and perhaps it is true that at times I take on too much guilt, but I would like to think that the guilt that settles in my chest and makes me quiet or angsty from time to time is something alive. It is not some dead weight that pushes me down or hardens me, instead it nourishes me and grows into accountability. It pushes me to reexamine my values and make changes, it urges me to be a better friend or lover, but mostly it reminds me that the only thing I control are my own actions, and that is a huge responsibility and a very serious one.
There are many people in my life who have done things that sadden me, things worthy of horror and protest, but they are my family and they are my friends and actions (good, bad or otherwise) do not happen in a vacuum. It is worth it for me to look at their actions and try to decipher my role in enabling them. And taking responsibility for that is an important step towards building a world where those actions aren’t tolerated. It is worth it so that, hopefully, I will not make that same mistake again. And there is good reason for me to feel guilty about making injustice easier. Because when I do not take responsibility for my actions, or my role in the actions of others, that is precisely what I am doing, it’s shifting blame, it’s silencing, and it’s counter productive.
There is reason for me to feel a pang of guilt when a man who sleeps on my street serenades me with a gospel song and 5 minutes later I open my door, pay a delivery man $15 dollars for one meal and lock my door behind me. There seems to be some sort of notion, even within radical communities, that we “deserve” things. I “deserve” to kick up my heels and enjoy that $15 dollar meal. But does that mean that Rex, the man who sleeps in my alley, “deserves” to go without? That $15 dollars could have bought food for both Rex and I for a week, it wouldn’t be vegan general tso’s chicken but it would have filled our bellies and fueled our bodies. And is there really a difference between deserving something and entitlement? And isn’t entitlement another product of privilege?
Perhaps we let ourselves off too easily. The individualism that fuels our society tells us that the individual, and only the individual, is responsible for their own actions. But that’s not true. We keep holding out for some big change, some new law, a new president, a circle A in the sky; we keep holding out for something better and focusing our attention elsewhere, whether that be the new fall line at the Gap, or a campaign to get gender identity included on ENDA, but rarely do we ever pause to think how we might change the ways we exist in this world. Because we know there is much to be done, but we also know we would have to sacrifice and for those of us bathed in privilege those are scary words.
So yes I feel guilty for many things right now, but that’s not my trouble, the trouble is my unwillingness to move. I’m stuck and self indulgent, but more than anything I’m terrified that someday I will become content with that.
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