I'm a wave, and you are too
Finding our "right size": holding the reality of both our power and our smallness
We are powerful and also limited.
— Edith Eva Eger
***
There is something exhilarating about finding our right size in our nothingness.
At a bar last night, my fiance and I met a woman who works in the humanitarian sector. She and her colleagues help people access land and property rights, birth certificates, and other identity documents.
She said that while living abroad, humanitarian workers see an immensity of needs: for clean water, for food, for physical safety, and for legal help. This can cause a very natural tendency to always want to do more, help more. This desire should also be balanced with an awareness that as individuals, we are just one part of a much larger effort, and each part is needed.
I asked her how she sees her role in “making the world a better place.”
“I think each of us is like a wave. Over long stretches of time, the waves shape the shoreline,” she said.
Some waves are bigger (like presidents, kings, CEOs), others are smaller (like most of us). Yet each wave makes an impact.
For many years, I put a lot of pressure on myself to “fix” all of the worlds problems. Now that I’m working only half-time, I judge myself for not doing enough environmental work:
I’m only volunteering on farms infrequently, my mind says.
Or: Our garden is still so rudimentary.
Or: I have met awesome fellow environmentalists here, but haven’t really done much with them beyond the initial meeting.
In short: I’m not doing enough.
Thinking of myself as wave helps me cut through the unhelpful story of shame. I’m powerful, but also limited in what I can do. I have a certain amount of time and energy available on any given day. Even though I work half-time, I have many other “circles of care” outside of environmentalism: my body, my relationships, my emotions, my home.
A single wave, no matter how big, has limited energy and is around for a limited time. A single wave, no matter how big, can’t sculpt the shoreline alone. Only billions of waves, over millions of years, can do that.
I’m a wave, and you are too.
P.S. One thing the wave metaphor doesn’t capture is the way that people impact other people. Nonetheless, I think it’s still a really useful lens on activism. I hope that it helps you as it’s helped me.