Super powers

2002-12-28 - 12:36 a.m.

Sometimes it's nice to read someone's diary and smile. I've been all gooshy about this lately, but thanks again, all of you, for daring to open up your lives, even a little bit.

Anyway...

A week or so ago, Pookie and I were talking while we were on our way to see the Two Towers.

We have a weird relationship, in that a large part of why we're together is because we both spend time thinking about things larger than ourselves, we both listen to the news to some degree or other (speaking of which: ignore the cloning babies for a minute - the American pilots who bombed the Canadian soldiers may have been high on amphetamines. It seems that giving drugs to soldiers is standard operating procedure in the US military...it seems like someone missed all the "Just Say No" commercials from the 80s. In addition, Iraw says the US just killed a few civilians. The US says it was a Self Defence Bombing). We think about global issues and politics, about human rights and justice, that sort of thing.

But, we also can't talk a lot about these things sometimes because we have a tendancy to dwell on the bad things: the Vatican banned gays from the church, George W. is a crook, The banks are holding our money hostage, we're stuck, they're stuck, the whole world is just sliding into decay...

The few times we do manage to talk without sliding into that quagmire, though, we have really good conversations...it's a good thing to be dating a smart man.

Anyway, so we were walking and starting to slide into that depressing state when Pookie said something about choice, and suddenly I was up in arms.

"We -do- have a choice, though!" I said. "That's the important thing. The people in power don't want us to realize that because the longer we go without making our own decisions the easier it gets for them, but right now we do have choices. We might not have them for much longer but right now he do."

Pookie then called me an optimist.

In the last entry, I talked about the three options I had, and those are real options, even if none of them are particularly appealing. Part of the reason, though, that I choose option 3 is because it gives me the widest range of choices. Yeah, I'll make mistakes, but they'll be individual mistakes, not actions taken under a broad, careless stroke of attitude. I have the choice of paying an extra few bucks to support local economies. I have the option to start a skills-trading system, or to sit on my ass. I have the choice of typing these long, rambly essays that two-dozen people may or may not read, and I have the choice of going into work each day. I can choose to recycle, or to compost, or to protest, or to not.

It's important to realise that we each have this power, and that each time we make a decision, we are making a powerful statement, we are changing the world. There is something both scary and reassuring in knowing that no one is powerless.

Cheers,

The Magus

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