"If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.” - T. Alan Armstrong
I saw the current Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart over the weekend. For anyone who lived through the beginnings of the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 1980s, it is an incredibly evocative and painful piece. I was indeed here, living in Greenwich Village and, while I am not arrogant enough to say that I was in the center of it all, it majorly impacted my life in many, many ways. I still cannot quite accept that it all unfolded the way that it did. The handling of this pandemic rates high on my list of things this country should be ashamed of.
That being said, I found myself strangely nostalgic and almost wistful for that time. I was a little jealous of the passion and galvanizing anger of the characters; of their focus and dedication to the rightness and necessity of a cause.
I miss that. I remember feeling that way then. I remember feeling that way doing clinic defense against the misguided Operation Rescue when they attacked women's clinics in NYC.
Several of my jobs have involved work in causes dear to my heart -- women's rights at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund; environmental issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council..children's' issues at Spunk Fund and Ventures in Education. Being at the front lines of these issues and being able to work for something I believed in, rather than just to put money in someone else's pocket in the corporate world, made the more mundane and boring tasks less so. I deeply believe in the sentiment expressed by Marian Wright Edelman " Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”
I now work at a large foundation that does some very good work, but we are removed from the front lines. We are the money behind the scenes. While it is noble work in its own way, its not the same. The types of people are not the same. The attitudes are not the same. If I were younger....and if I didn't have a child....but I'm not and I do, and for now, I need the benefits. In little more than two years I will have earned my benefits for life -- the golden handcuffs are locked until mid September 2013.
I need more. I have many causes dear to my heart that sort fell to the wayside during Adam's first few years at home. I think it is time to shift a little more focus and figure out what I can do to fill my soul while I am filling my pocket. I want that for me and I want to set an example for my son, for the kind of person I dearly hope he will be, the type for whom Marian Wright Edelman's words will resonate:
“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”
