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The Resentment of Finally Getting What You Needed

“If you’ve been around activists for a long time, you might have noticed an oddity when they start getting success. When people finally are ready to hear their message, or show up newly awakened to problems and ready for direction and guidance.

Sometimes, that activist who’s been at it so long doesn’t respond in kind with gratitude or enthusiasm. Sometimes, they respond with resentment, bitterness, and a kind of collapse. Sometimes, they’re pissed at the newer people for taking so long to see the issues. Sometimes, they’re utterly unwilling to continue the work of educating.

This sucks for the folks new to the work, who could use the mentorship and wisdom of the ones who have been on the journey for a while. It sucks when we blast our new would-be allies and co-collaborators with more hostility than we’d direct at our adversaries. It feels unfair, and disillusioning, and may alienate new folks or lead them to marginalize the cranky elder.”

Only Connect

A recent opportunity to see the contemporary play Nonsense and Beauty, about Edwardian British author E.M. Forster, inspired me to return to my English major…

Self-Care is Important, and It’s Not Enough, and You Don’t Need to Apologize for That

“The backlash to Self-care originates, as is often the case, in its over-popularization and watering down. Important practices become touted as cure-alls, and any threat they posed to the political or economic order quickly becomes neutralized once absorbed into it.

So the transformative practices of simply sitting and doing nothing but breathing and observing one’s self, or of taking a break from hustling and consumption to relax in a warm bath, feed back into the atomizing culture of making each individual responsible for their own stress and the management of it.”

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