On Being More Than an (Animal Rights) Activist

I woke up this morning exhausted. Exhausted and with a mushy brain after a past week of draining experiences and wondering what the hell I was going to write about. I tossed around half a dozen ideas for what I would focus on but couldn't seem to get started on any of them.

You see, if this were a personal (and less public) blog, animal rights would be the last thing I'd be writing about today. I'd write about what's happening with my hospitalized grandpa and the trip I made by train to see him yesterday; I'd write about what the last year has been like for him and for my grandma, and by extension for the rest of the family and for me. I'd write about what it's like to be part of a close-knit family to which you feel close in some ways but from which you are strikingly different in most ways; I'd write about the frustration of having my green ways of living and my compassion for animals regularly mocked, by family, by friends, by strangers. I'd write about the financial and emotional complications of my life that are causing me stress and distracting me. I'd write about a broken heart and crises of confidence.

I'd write about Chance, my elderly corgi lab companion, and her recent maladies and how scared I am of losing her in the next year or two and what she has meant to me since I found her. I'd write about Mabel, my foster(?) pit bull whom I adore but who has absolutely run my life for the last year, and about how much I need miracle progress for her and a break for me. I'd write about how tired I am of having to defend her to people who think they know more about pit bulls than I do, despite the fact that they get their information solely from a sensationalized news story now and then, and I've gotten mine from really learning about dogs in general, about pit bulls, and about specifically the wonderful, loving, and, yes, traumatized and fearful dog who shares my home.

I'd write about my frustrations with health care systems and educational systems and the way we as a society, and as individuals, treat our elderly. I'd write about the chance that's slipping away from me to find lost records and lost memories in Madison, Wisconsin, of the woman whose institutionalization and lobotomy changed the course of a family's history. I'd write about what the journey of exploration and understanding of this story in recent years has meant for me and why I'm doing it. I'd write about how that research and that someday-book was my priority pre-appearance of Mabel in my neighborhood last year and pre-animal rights blogging.

But not only do I not write about all these things on this animal rights blog; I do not write about them elsewhere anymore (e.g., on a personal blog) either, not even when I feel the compelling need to. I barely even talk about them. One reason? Time. When I'm not blogging at Change.org, I need to be editing (my "real" job) or taking care of dogs.

But another reason? It's so easy when you're working on a cause such as animal rights, when you are faced with indescribable, indefensible, mass suffering every single day--every single second of every single day--to wonder how you can justify devoting time and energy to anything else.

What I write about, think about, and try to get others to think about on this blog is literal life and death, every day. Individual, deeply feeling and deeply suffering living beings are going through hell on earth, moment after moment, day after day, year after year, at the request, demand, and hands of humans. For them there is no reprieve, no break. For every minute I have spent writing this, 19,000 (land) animals have been killed, unnecessarily, for food in the United States. By the time I fall asleep tonight, 27 million of them will have been slaughtered today, just in this country, most of them in horrifying ways, most of them after horrible lives full of physical pain and emotional trauma. And this does not count the suffering and death of all the others--the fish, crustaceans, and other marine animals; the animals in research and testing labs; the dogs, cats, rabbits, and others in shelters; the free-living animals being shot or trapped for fun or for the sake of cattle ranchers.

The sheer magnitude of the incessant suffering and constant death is too vast to comprehend. And the pressure to open people's eyes to it, to what's wrong with it, to how they're contributing to it, and to how they can stop contributing to it can be simply overwhelming. For every person who tells me she is going to go vegan or make another important life change because of reading something I've written, I am relieved and tearfully grateful. But for every person I know I've not affected or who scoffs at my efforts, I feel sorrow and failure because the consequences are very real for countless animals; the battle is truly life and death. So it consumes me.

But here's the thing. I am not just an animal rights advocate. It is an enormous part of who I am, but it is not all of who I am. Animal rights is not all of who any animal rights advocate is. It is only part of what I need to express and experience in my daily life, and there are days when "animal rights advocate" is just barely a part of who I am--and that's OK. What I need to remember--and what others fighting for animals (and for other causes, life-and-death causes especially) must remember too--is that it's all right to do things for ourselves and to think about ourselves and other issues, in addition to doing for and thinking about animals. It's not only OK, but even necessary, to take care of ourselves too and to pay attention to and care about what's happening in the world outside animal rights. If we burn out, if we break down, or even if we seem out of touch with the rest of the world, we'll be of no use to the animals. Friends keep telling me this too, and one in specific keeps encouraging me to take pattrice jones's by-all-accounts-excellent book Aftershock (subtitled "Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies") off my shelf and actually read it. And they are right.

Do I have the time or ability to do much outside of editing, Change.org blogging, and dog caretaking right now? Not really. So I'll be the last person to chastise anyone else for not making time for activities for which maybe they really don't have time because of difficult life circumstances. For example, I can see how activists who are employed by large nonprofits and who bring in a regular, decent salary for their advocacy work may be less stressed and more able to do things for themselves--if you work for animals nine hours a day and get adequately paid for it, it's easier to take those evening and weekend hours for yourself--whereas if you work a full-time job unrelated to animals and have to squeeze in your activism during the evenings and weekends, finding time for yourself is decidedly more difficult. Or if you work more than one job or must work long hours, like I do, personal time can feel like an impossibility. But I, for one, am going to work on making the time, and when I have it, I'm going to take it. I suggest the other activists out there do the same. It will make us better people, it will make us better activists, and it will make us better models of what living a compassionate, but still varied and vibrant life can look like.

As soon as circumstances allow again, I'm going to devote more time to enjoying meals out and visiting family and listening to live music. I'm going to start and finish books and go hiking and check out free museums. And maybe, just maybe, I'm even going to give myself a much-needed form of release by getting back to writing on topics other than animal rights too. And soon, soon, I'm going to read Aftershock.

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Image from "The Other Hat"

Related post: "Ready to Attack Animal Rights Activists? Consider This First"