Things do not improve because of wishes; they improve because of will. Desire, by its nature, is always hidden. It manifests only through action. No matter how badly I may want my country to care for its people, rebuild its infrastructure, stop the horrifying cycle of debt which acts as a new form of slavery, and halt the pointless bombing of other nations, it will never happen so long as I keep this desire to myself.
There is much about our daily lives that is dehumanizing and abusive. It is not only everyday indignities that cause so much stress: our relationships with other people also produce great frustration, and oftentimes pain. So many of us are afraid of the illusory harms of strangers — be they child molesters, terrorists, or illegal aliens — that we forget that the greatest harms are inflicted, intentionally or not, by those closest to us.
An act as innocent as reading the news is debilitating for the average person. How much more burdensome the everyday struggle of living! And how silently wounding those harms that are too raw to relive, too embarrassing to reveal. There is something deeply wrong when the abuse tolerated in society — the soldiers we send to needlessly die in foreign wars, the poor and the destitute who are ignored, the silence over the neverending violence against women — is summarily dismissed as ordinary.
But no matter how deep the hurt or great the breach in trust, we must never overlook the power inherent in every moment to better our situations. Much could be improved if we recognized the simple truth that the earlier we insist on change, the sooner we might recline in the bounty of success. Conversely, the longer we wait, the more difficult the problems and more desperate the challenges of the 21st century.
Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, eloquently talked about the nature of liberation:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
It is far past time for people to shut off their music and turn off their television sets even for one hour and ask what is really important in their lives and what type of world they wish to bequeath to those who will follow them. How little compassion we must have for our descendents and how tiny our love of liberty when there is so much complacency in the world today.
Life possesses meaning when there is triumph over adversity. To accept is to admit defeat; to struggle is to be victorious. In the face of indolence, we ought to be doubly convinced of the need for positive movements. A slave is free the moment she rejects her chains and demands what is justly hers. Realizing that we are free only when we want it is the greatest challenge of the modern era. But it is a challenge worth accepting, for when success is at hand, we will cherish the results in ways we would otherwise not, and finally realize the importance, and beauty, of living life as free people who can love the way they want and act the way they choose. This is the promise of genuine freedom, genuine democracy, genuine independence, genuine liberty — it is a promise worth making, and one day, a promise worth living.
