[at-l] Section from a book.

[stephensadams at hotmail.com (Steve Adams)]

[The following is all quoted from a book, below.]

(To the question) I want to do something, but what can I do?  I'm just one 
person, an average person.  I can't have an impact.  I live with the despair 
of my own powerlessness.  I can't bring myself to do anything.  The world is 
so screwed up, and I have so little power.  I feel so paralyzed.

***

I have an illness that causes intermittent bouts of paralysis.  ...  And 
that paralysis has taught me ... that my protestations of my own 
powerlessness are bogus.  Yes, some days I can't move or see.  But you know 
what?  Some days I can move.  Some days I can see.  And the difference 
between being able to walk across the room and not being able to walk across 
the room is epic.

I commute to campus by foot along a railroad track.  In spring, I come 
across turtles who have gotten stuck.  The track is littered with the 
hollowing shells of turtles that couldn't escape the rails.  So, I bend 
over, and I pick up the still living trapped turtles that I do find.  I 
carry them to a wooded area and let them go.  For those turtles, that much 
power that I have is enough.

I'm just like those turtles.  When I have been sick and housebound for days, 
I wish someone-anyone-would talk to me.  To hear a human voice say my name; 
to be touched: that would mean the world to me.

One day an attack hit me while I was walking home from campus.  ...  There 
was snow on the ground, and more snow was falling from the sky.  I struggled 
with each step; wobbled and wove across the road.  I must have looked like a 
drunk.  One of my neighbors, whom I had never met, stopped and asked if I 
were okay.  He drove me home.

He didn't hand me the thousands of dollars I needed for surgery.  He didn't 
take me in and empty my puke bucket.  He just gave me one ride, one day.  I 
am still grateful to him and touched by his gesture.

I'd lived in the neighborhood for years, and so far he has been the only one 
to stop.  The problem is not that we have so little power.  The problem is 
that we don't use the power that we have.

***

I was once a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I also volunteered for the Sisters of 
Charity, the order begun by Mother Teresa.  When people learn of these 
things, they sometimes act impressed.  I am understood to be a virtuous 
person.

***

To put myself through college, I worked as a nurse's aid.  I earned minimum 
wage.  I wore a pink polyester uniform and I dealt with the elderly and the 
dying, ignored people who went years without seeing a loved one, who died 
alone.  When I speak of this job, I never impress anyone.  I am not 
understood to be a virtuous person.  Rather, I am understood to be working 
class.

I loved this difficult, low-paid work ... because I physically and 
emotionally touched people everyday, all day long; I made them comfortable; 
I made them laugh; I challenged them; they rose to meet the challenges.  In 
return, patients shared with me the most precious commodity in the universe: 
their humanity.

This ... is not a protest against selfishness, which, well done, can be a 
beautiful thing.  ...  The right dress worn by the right starlet on Oscar 
night probably does as much to feed the soul as a perfect haiku.

***

The Lamed Vov Tzaddikim are the thirty-six hidden saints of Jewish folklore. 
  Unlettered and insignificant, they work at humble trades and pass 
unnoticed.  Because of these anonymous saints, the world continues to exist. 
  Without their insignificant, unnoticed virtue - Poof! - God loses divine 
patience, and the world goes up in smoke.

Sometimes we convince ourselves that the "unnoticed" gestures of 
"insignificant" people mean nothing.  It's not enough to recycle our soda 
cans; we must Stop Global Warming Now.  Since we can't Stop Global Warming 
Now, we may as well not recycle our soda cans.  It's not enough to be our 
best selves; we have to be Gandhi.  And yet when we study the biographies of 
our heroes, we learn that they spent years in preparation doing tiny, decent 
things before one historical moment propelled them to center stage.

***

Besides the pressure of virtue as an unattainable status reserved for the 
elect, there may be another reason why people don't live their own ideals.  
It may be that many who do not live what they believe have been stunted.  
They've been told many times: "What you feel does not matter; what you 
believe is ridiculous; what you envision is worthless; just sit back and 
obey the priest, the preacher, the teacher, the cop, the mob, the man in 
charge, or your own fear."  When the still, small voice whispers to them 
that they ought to visit an elderly neighbor, or write a letter to the 
editor, or pull a few strings and let the indigent patient in to see the 
doctor, even though the red tape says they cannot, they tell the still, 
small voice "Stifle yourself!"

***

While working or traveling in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, I 
occasionally met people who really did have next to nothing, but who stunned 
me with their insistence on the abundance of their own humanity.  One 
afternoon, as I trekked to my teaching post in the Himalayas, a monsoon 
storm turned day into night and a landslide wiped out my trail.  I got 
terribly lost; coming to a strange village, exhausted, I sat on the porch of 
a peasant home.  Inside, the family was eating roasted cow-corn kernels for 
dinner.  Roasted cow-corn kernels were to be their entire dinner; there was 
nothing else on their menu.

A man inside saw that a human form was sitting on his porch.  He couldn't 
have seen that I was American, or anything else, for that matter.  It was 
dark night by then, in a village without electricity. In any case,  I was 
wearing a sari.  He whispered to his wife, "Someone is sitting on our porch. 
  We have to cook rice."  Rice is the highest status food in that economy.  
And, by "rice," they meant, for them, an elaborate meal consisting of rice, 
lentils, and vegetables.

***

Danusha Veronica Goska.  From The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A 
Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Loeb (Basic Books, 
www.theimpossible.org), named the #3 political book of Fall 2004 by the 
History Channel and American Book Association.