Most days I understand that any problem with which I struggle can be characterized as petty. In my heart of hearts, I recognize that my bank account rises and falls at my own discretion, my pain substantially abates if I rest, and the awkwardness of my body does not inhibit a fulfilling life. Occasionally temptation lures me to self-pity. But I know the truth.
The powerful images of this historic time struck my senses and wrenched sobs from my defenseless psyche. In the midst of my workaday hours, a CNN alert drew me to open a browser. A stunning photograph of professors standing with linked arms, holding the line between two groups of protesters, greeted my disbelieving mind. What is this, I asked myself. Who are they. I read the caption, my immediate obligations forgotten.
I scrolled other sites, studying terrible pictures of wounded children wailing in fright on the streets of Gaza. I am neither Palestinian nor Jewish. I am in fact half-Irish, a quarter Austrian, and a quarter Syrian. But I am a mother; I have taught; I have studied. I have walked a protest line. I have gone to jail for taking a stand in defense of civil rights and against inequity. However for most of my life, I have been a thoughtless middle-class American with a reasonably comfortable existence Today I keenly understood the principle that silence equates to complicity.
I want to stand in that brave line of faculty. I long to fly across the world and gather those children to my breast. Instead I can only raise my monthly donation to World Central Kitchen in the hopes that my dollars will suffice to fill a tiny, empty belly. I shed hot tears, lamenting my feeble stand against the senseless tragedy devastating that small sliver of someone’s precious homeland.
When I came home tonight, my fingers had swelled from the constant typing during eight hours of work. I shrugged and thought about my favorite Isaac Bashevis Singer anecdote, the last line of which defines catastrophe as an incident in which little children die. If I accomplish nothing else in my time on this earth, I pray that some act of mine will forestall catastrophe, here at home or in a distant corner of this troubled world. I stand with those who protest yet another senseless onslaught of the innocent. In the old way of my oft-lamented catholic childhood, I pledge to silently endure my suffering that theirs might somehow thereby lessen.
It’s the second day of the one-hundred and twenty-fifth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
–Lorraine (née Art) Schneider
My friends: I do not usually talk about current events in this blog. I have a social-political blog though it currently has been rendered inactive for technical reasons. Because I lack that forum, and because my observations dovetail with my journey to joy, I chose to use this platform for these comments. Take them as you will.