What if we stopped one day, looked at all the work we had done to try to make the world a better place than we found it, and instead realized despite all of our efforts, we had failed?
What if we supported political candidates, helped to get them into office, only to find many of them, far too many of them, coopted by the perquisites of office, concern for reelection, or wanting to be "players" and abandoned what we thought they had promised us?
What if we devoted our energy and our time and our passion to trying to make the government more responsive to we the people and less responsive to those who already have power and money, only to find economic inequality becoming ever more severe, and decreasing numbers of people retaining any hope for a better future for themselves or their posterity?
Would we feel like fools?
Or might we wonder how much worse it might already be had we not tried?
The tale is of the boy walking along the beach tossing stranded starfish into the water.
"little boy" a man told him, "you can't save all the starfish."
"yes, but I can save this one" as he threw one more into the oncoming waves.
I am tired.
I am worn out.
I find it difficult to get up each morning, to drive 45 miles to continue teaching.
I find little energy for politics, for writing about policy, for challenging myself and others.
I see so much of what I have done, what I continue to do, and have to wonder why I keep at it, instead of just withdrawing, as increasingly I long to do, to carve out a space where I can
11-19-13 teacherken at Daily Kos
teacherken at Daily Kos: Remember 150 years ago todaythese words were spoken: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met o
by mike simpson / 8h
