The history of life on Earth is messy, wasteful, bloody, painful, and constantly changing. But it's mesmerizing, awesome, sublime, elegant, beautiful and unlikely. Yes, it is all of those things, and human society is all of those things.
Today's world evolved through tooth and nail, extinction and explosions, famine and flood, drought and deluge. Each still living organism sufficiently adapted to have survived until today, and there's no guarantee for any of us for the next millennium. Any of us (fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, etc.) could be gone in the geological blink of an eye, and any of us (individually) could be snuffed out tomorrow. But one thing is common -- all the surviving species so far had to, at some point in their lives, fight to the death for our place in the ecosystem.
Society is like that. Different ways of living, models for community, and modes of thought have ebbed and flowed, risen and fallen, been invented and become extinct, using the same fundamental dynamic as life: the most adaptable for a given environment is the one that survives. It's in this invention and adaption/adoption and the competition for dominance where the interesting things happen, and it's happening right now in every aspect of modern human life. The species is healthy when people are striving for something, for their survival, and whoever strives hardest, is willing to join the fray for the sustainability for their ideas, to help them propagate and thrive, will dominate.
My question to you is which ideas are you out fighting for? How hard are you fighting? If enough of us are willing to sit by and let the elite, the desperate, the enlightened, or the others do the fighting, if we don't choose an ideal we'd like to see flourish and get behind it, those ideas will wither and die. We are most alive when we are in the arena, we are most at peace when we are struggling for what we know to be a worthy cause. Are you in? Or are you on the sidelines watching. Pick up your tools and get building. Get on the bullhorn and lead. Grab your bat and step up to the base. Take up your cross and follow. Whatever your favorite metaphor, the more people representing what they deeply believe, the better we'll be. As real members of the chain of life still inhabiting the planet, the fighters will own the future and either make it better, and the idle will hasten our demise.
Use your limited tenure to advance your cause, and if you don't have one, open your eyes and ears and let the one that makes your blood boil, that raises your hackles, that makes you cry, or that brings you to your feet with a shout, drive you. Get into it, learn more, and get to work. Get off the damn couch, get your butt out into the real world, with your community action teams, your legislative working groups, your staff of volunteers building something, your horde of volunteers cleaning up the estuary, your neighborhood watch watching for crime, your church group gathering blankets for the homeless, your art co-op creating posters to spread the word about injustice, your design team to create the new school, your youth-group teaching teens about savings accounts and budgeting. You name it, there's something you can give to be part of a solution. Yes, your main occupation is often a great goodness, and unless your job is directly improving policy and process, there is something you are particularly suited for.
There will be casualties on both sides, but letting evil (however you see it) win is a bigger casualty for all. No cutting yourself slack because life's hard. No cutting yourself slack because life is easy. Join your cause and advance it with gusto. And if you find out you're fighting the wrong battle half way through because you learned more, broadened your perspective, saw the light, then cut your losses, undo your damage and get on the right side. It's through the fight that you know -- like the soldier who now fights for peace, the former racist to now teaches acceptance, the gangster who helps children avoid his mistakes. Fight to make your community, or state, or country, or mankind better because of you and for your children and mine. If you don't fight, you may not suffer, but your progeny will. Face the fear, take the risk, and when you do die, you'll be in heaven (which I define as dying with a smile in your heart (if not on your face) for having done your best to better your world and pay back the universe for blessing you with the sublime gift of life.
You can do all that while giving your family all the love they need when they need it -- it's not an exclusive proposition. In fact, if you are not living to your potential, you're not doing a very good job of modeling and teaching your children what it means to truly live. That's your job as a parent. Get to it!
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