13. I am so tired

...this is hard

Hello, how have you been?

This has been a hard week for a lot of us. I know that sounds pretentious. It sounds like an overstatement. Sitting in our comfortable houses with our comfortable jobs and safe commutes, this is as stupid and insipid as it gets.

“It’s been a tiring week.”

“I am so exhausted.”

“I just need a break,” from all this frantic sharing of stories about people who are actually going through a genocide. I am sorry, I don’t mean to be dismissive.

Activism is, in fact, exhausting. And we are not even the “real, going on the street, organising, demonstrating, protesting” type of activists. We are '“the sitting on our toilet, fuming, crying, feeling helpless, reposting stories on Instagram” kind of activists. But it does involve emotional labour. And that is truly draining.

Imagine being on your phone from the time you wake up till the time you force yourself to fall asleep, seeing these images of devastation constantly in front of your eyes, of children crying, of mothers weeping, of fathers numbed with shock. They break you at a level that you cannot fathom immediately. It makes you feel so powerless, so at the mercy of people who don’t give a second thought about your existence, who only care about the bottom line, the profit margins, the power.

But you can’t help it, can you? You want to stop, you want to take a break, you want to be normal, you want to get a coffee with a friend and talk about books and dress up for Halloween. And you try. But you can’t fully turn off the instinct that makes you pick up your phone and scroll a little more, seeing a little more of the stories coming out of a city that’s nearing destruction.

I understand you. I believe you. I will comfort you. Your devastation is valid. Your fatigue, your pain, your stress – it’s all real. Remember you are doing the right thing, you aren’t being performative. This is all you can do within your powers and you are doing your best.

I will leave you with a little quote from Noam Chomsky’s On Palestine –

“The easy answer would be to say that we do not become activists; we simply forget that we are. We are all born with compassion, generosity, and love for others inside us. We are all moved by injustice and discrimination. We are all, inside, concerned human beings. We all want to give more than to receive. We all want to live in a world where solidarity and companionship are more important values than individualism and selfishness.”

Keep going. You are doing good.

Until next time being the activists we were born to be,

Sanj 🫨