Maybe I was wrong, and recycling that iced tea can wasn’t worth forcing myself through the thorny bushes. Maybe it wasn’t worth volunteering at an illegal dump site just to find it the following year filled with more trash. Maybe attending that public hearing and arguing against fossil fuels wasn’t worth spending hours writing because they were going to build it anyway.
I know that in every instance the outcome led me to feel defeated- physically and emotionally.
How much more wrong do I have to be for me to realize that I’m just one- that, at the end of the day, no matter what I believe or do, it’ll never be near enough to fix the problems I hope we solve?
I’m just one. And it feels lonely when you feel trapped in time, knowing that you’re doing the best you can with hundreds of tasks to complete. The small victories often feel very small and repetitive, like going to my 30thcleanup and plogging every morning run.
I don’t want to give up, but I don’t want to keep circling back to feeling like I’m wasting away.
And as much as I want to believe that it is just a viewpoint issue, systems need to change to meet the problems we face.
So maybe I am right, and recycling that iced tea can meant stopping it from running off into the ocean. Maybe it was worth volunteering at an illegal dump site because it prevented chemicals from leeching into the aquifer. Maybe attending that public hearing and arguing against fossil fuels helped shift the conversation on renewable energy.
This was written on the indigenous lands of the CHamoru people.
