Despair

Today I despaired while folding socks. I happened to notice that many pairs are way past their prime, filled with holes and ready to be reborn into their next existence as... something. I decided a while back that I wouldn't be buying any new clothes except underwear and socks, and those I would buy sustainably made. That's when it hit me. This overwhelming sense of scale hit me. Here I was worrying about buying ecologically friendly socks when the world is going to shit. There are people being held without trial for fighting for what they believe. Our government is encouraging its people to participate rampant consumption at such a horrible rate that I can only believe that they think the end times are coming so fuck all. We are at war so we can obtain more oil when instead we should be investing that money in finding alternatives to petroleum.

And what am I doing? I write a blog that no one reads telling people little creative ways they can be less bad. And in the end will that help? Will it make a difference? Does anything I do matter at all?

I could be so happy living my life like it is. Becoming a librarian, teaching myself and others to live simpler, less wasteful lives, but there is this deep guilt that it isn't enough. I feel like I should quit my life and somehow make a real difference. Become a single crusader like Gandhi or MLK, scream at the top of my lungs until people start paying attention to the world around them instead of just marching along in their own little lives totally unaware of their surroundings.

Even then, though, could I actually make a change or is everyone so accustomed to their consumerist lifestyles that nothing short of a worldwide disaster would change them? I know people who don't see, who laugh off my concerns as eccentric, and in a way I envy them. I wonder what it's like not to feel like you have to save the world. But once you look around you can't close your eyes again. You can't watch the videos of how animals are treated and go back to eating factory farmed meat. You can't empathize with normal Iraqies who just want their lives back and then go back to using petroleum products like they will never run out.

I just don't know what I can do to actually make a difference except to just keep trying, to lead by example and to talk and talk and talk until someone listens. But even then will that be enough?