4/1/07

Passivity

I am passive...

I am passive as I wait for a leader, instead of using my own voice which truly speaks from my heart.

I am passive as (some) of the government is on trial for high crimes and misdemeanors that have left people homeless, penniless, illiterate, lifeless.

I am passive as the nation loses civil rights once thought necessary to keep tyranical leaders at bay.

I am passive as a war rapes, tortures and kills at the request of corporations who were born in this country.

I am passive as I watch someone else do their thing, as I may not necessarily know what MY thing is all the time.

I am passive as the planet heats up, cooking me, maybe drowning me, eventually starving me off of her for abusing her.

Are you being passive?
Have you been passive?
Can we all stop being passive?
Really, do have any time left to keep being passive?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i understand what you mean by feeling passive. many times i feel the same way. but we do what we can.

i think we are all passive at some level, and are proactive at others.

we all find our niches here and there, and we all somehow impact things, no matter how small or big the impact is.

as creative living beings of this world, i don't think we can be passive because everything we do impacts everything at some level. even though you're just sitting there doing nothing, you are allowing other things to happen, so ultimately you are doing something. (did that make sense?)

we choose our battles, and we choose to be more passive with some than with others, but ultimately even our passivity leads up to something.

the fact that you speak up about things, that you try to make change in the circles that you are in, or that you write what you think in this blog, is enough to indicate that you are not being passive. or at least as passive as other people are...

we can't do everything.

am i and have i been passive? with somethings yes, and others no.

only we can decide not to be passive, but yes we can stop being passive on the things that we want to see change.

and to answer your last question... um, time is flying by so fast now and things are changing so much, that it may be too late... but we have to be proactive and positive in the things that we can handle in our daily lives, and hope that this will make a positive change somehow for the future.

we do what we can...

Anonymous said...

i disagree with anonymous there above me: we do what we can. that sounds like permission for poor performance. we can do better. casi siempre. saying that sitting there doing nothing equals doing something is just a word game. this leads to the equation that 0 = 1. perhaps this is true in a life of fantasy or some metaphysical conjecture but in living it is action that counts.

however, i will agree that we do what we can is true when we define can as comfort. that is, we do what is comfortable. personally, i wasted a lot of time today when i should have been working on a personal project. however, working on it seemed less comfortable than goofing off. one might say i did what i could. but to accept that is to accept a disabling definition of who i am. i may not be able to do everything, but i damn well better believe that i can do anything.