Narrowing In On The Big Picture

This afternoon I was once again invited to speak at our local university's Take Back the Night March and rally.  Take Back the Night is a grassroots, largely college campus based effort to bring attention to issues of rape and sexual assault, and to quite literally take back the night..and the day and claim our environments as safe spaces, free of sexual assault.  And once again I prepared my remarks thoughtfully, highlighting one component of the rape culture that students can relate to and offered some direction.  My remarks this year focus on institutional betrayal.  I wanted to address Title IX violations on campuses that do not adequately follow through on complaints of rape, for example.  Featuring the newly released list of 55 campuses who are under Federal investigation for such violations.

I  wanted to bring their attention to the still missing 276 high school girls in Nigeria that were abducted from their boarding school because the terrorists that have been holding them for nearly a month are against the education of girls. I wanted them to know that there are reports that the girls are being sold for $12 to militants to be their sexual slaves and that the Nigerian Government has turned a blind eye.  I added to my remarks a quote from Nicholas Kristof at the NYTimes about how many nations have mobilized in the search for the passengers of the missing Malaysian airliner, but that there has been no serious search for the abducted girls, who outnumber the missing passengers on that fateful flight.   

So with speech in hand I stepped up to the microphone and, for the second year in a row, looked out over a sea of....15 students,  and delivered my speech.  The lack of students, at least on this day in this place, dedicated to social change got me thinking.  It got me thinking about feeling powerless to change things and apathy.  Now, I can't generalize in this way about my University's population of students, after all 15 of them showed up.  But I'm talking about our culture in general and myself in particular.  

I was thinking about the marches and the petitions etc. concerning epilepsy that I frequently bow out of.  It isn't apathy that confounds me.  Certainly not that, not when it is front and center in my life daily.  But I do feel quite exhausted.  Powerless, perhaps, but more so that I cannot imagine pulling back the lens to see the big picture.  

It angers me that on any given evening our (TV) dinner will be interrupted with phone calls from Save the Children, Paralyzed Veterans, The Leukemia Foundation etc, etc, etc.  But never have I answered a call from anyone raising money for or awareness about epilepsy.  However you won't find me making such calls, when certainly I could. 

I was thinking about what I actually do with my time.  Forward motion, or dead stop.  Those are my only two speeds I'm afraid.  The forward motion moves me through my work and gets dinner on the table(s).  It gets appointments made for Ces, drags Griffin through his Social Studies 12 class that COULD prevent him from graduating.  (The kid is killing me.) Then, dead stop.  I can lay back like no one you know.  Weekends are lazy and non-productive.  And that's just fine with me. But too frequently I look up and a month has gone by or a whole season.  

I think I need to build in time to plan, to set goals, to mobilize.  I would like to be more active in organizations like The Cure or attend Epilepsy Foundation functions.  I'd like to bother random strangers at dinner and ask them to devote some of their energy (and dollars) to addressing an illness that affects more people than multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and Parkinsons combined.  Just not today.  I'm going to take a little nap.