[DISPLAY_ULTIMATE_SOCIAL_ICONS]

Debbie says:

I was going to blog about something else altogether, but I checked my feed first, and I found the newest comic from Robot Hugs.

I reproduce it here not just because it reflects Robot Hugs’ reliable ability to tell whole truths. It spoke to me especially because I’ve been listening to Deray McKesson on Pod Save the People for a few months now. One feature of the show is that Deray interviews a very wide range of people–actors, politicians, political staffers, chefs, artists, just about anyone who has some connection to work that saves the people, in a very wide sense.

Deray is a brilliant interviewer, and he has a couple of questions he comes back to again and again. The pertinent one here is “What do you say to people who have given up? Who think things are going so badly, or who’ve been fighting for so long, that they just don’t have any hope for change?”

I love this question and I love the range of answers. Last night, I was talking about it and someone asked me what my answer would be. I said that there are lots of reasons to not give up (at least not for too long), but that in my mind the biggest one is that doing something is good for most people. Feeling the weight of the trouble, the scope of the danger, the magnitude of past failures pulls you under; doing something energizes — not everyone, because nothing is true of everyone — but a wide range of people.

Robot Hugs is going local; that’s a great direction. Any direction that calls to you is a great direction. Sliding under the water isn’t just not helping anyone else–it’s also not helping you. And in the end, you’re who you’ve got.