I am tired. I am angry. I am realistic about my mortality. I am realistic about the future of humanity. I am most often alone in my thoughts. Yet I remain actively hopeful.

Is my continued effort in the face of reality merely a reflection of my will to survive? Is my anger-driven effort all for naught? Would I be better to pretend that humanity is the preeminent, chosen species, allowing us to dominate and ignore all else? And would I be better to pretend that because I grew up a middle-class white male, I can dominate and/or ignore lesser humans?

There are many who feel better about their self because they do not work to dominate, they simply pretend and ignore. But to pretend is to perpetuate ignorance, and to ignore is to allow continued oppression.

I cannot pretend. I cannot ignore. I have no desire to dominate, but I would very much like to influence. Perhaps this is what I need to consider this week: how to influence compassionately with urgency.

Urgency implies seriousness and demands insistence, which has a likelihood of being interpreted as a desire to dominate. When this urgency is coupled with my anger it increases that likelihood. Yet when I temper the anger to present more calmly and come across more compassionately, the necessary urgency either becomes diluted or disappears entirely. How do I convince others to NOT pretend and ignore when I am judged at one extreme (peacenik) or the other (fanatic)? There has to be a middle road. I have yet to find it.

At some point and at many points in my continued learning and growth I have believed that written thought could temper emotions (such as anger) and aid me in both the delivery of my message and the clarification and advancement of my own thought. And I believe it has; I believe my message is coherent in its written form, but there is no one there to receive it. This is at least partially because one outcome of these past years of weekly written thought, is the recognition and constant, continuous reminders that the more I know, the more I know I don’t know. And this certainty of uncertainty, coupled with the fact that I have no audience, nor the confidence to seek an audience, contributes to the compassionate urgency dichotomy dilemma I find myself in today.

I can no longer not express myself in this medium. I am afraid that if I were to stop, my anger would dominate my compassion, and my urgency would be overwhelmed by my sense of reality, resulting in the death of my active hope, leaving only an inanimate shell of passive belief. And I believe that this hope by itself, stagnant and stinking, is of no value. And though my current efforts toward learning and growth, (i.e. active hope), is also of no apparent value to others, it has become quite valuable to me.

Though I have in the past, written to convince myself to stay the path, as I said above, I don't believe that is this week's purpose. I am not questioning my habit; I am questioning how to repurpose my habit in order to influence compassionately with urgency. But I am uncertain; if this weekly-written-thought habit ever did gain an audience, would it be perceived as 1) quiet, sad desperation, 2) the frantic ravings of an urgent anger, 3) merely an effort to justify my existence, or 4) an actual, sincere effort to save the world?

But if rational, coherent written thought is not the solution I seek, is it the middle road I seek? And am I just somehow implementing it incorrectly? Or is there another nearby middle road that will encourage acknowledgement of and attention to reality? Expertise and science are great candidates for middle roads, but are frequently dry, boring, and difficult to understand, and do not instill the sense of urgency necessary for change and progress. Pretended expertise may instill a sense of urgency, but it is never a true middle road; it is a detour to a dead end. I have seen both small and large crises and catastrophes, such as a hurricane or job loss or a pandemic, serve as a short-term wake-up call forcing us to listen to actual science and expertise, but invariably, after a given period of time, we tend to return to normal or find a new normal and then continue to pretend and ignore. I do not know how to induce a constant, consistent necessity for urgency.

So, if contemplative, rational written thought (including science, expertise, and passionate pleas for urgency based on actual science and expertise) is a middle road, how do I encourage more travelers? This direction of thought tells me that perhaps I have been missing the point. Perhaps the middle road is not “my” written thought; perhaps the middle road is “all” serious, rational written thought. And perhaps my contribution to this effort is the passion and compassion with which I read and write and study and learn. Perhaps my written thought is merely a very narrow footpath on this much wider thruway; which makes sense as I am constantly seeking growth by frequently changing lanes, speeding up, slowing down, taking detours and exits, and learning the landscape. I believe traffic is heavier today than 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. And I don’t believe it is heavier only because of greater numbers of people. I believe as a species we find value in learning and growth, more so now than at any time in our history. We are being actively hopeful.

The process of written thought can temper emotion, yet, with practice, will also allow for emotional expression. Anger, urgency and compassion can each be given their due in an attentive and serious exercise of written thought. So, in this moment, if my ability to influence compassionately with urgency, is only my ability to influence myself compassionately with urgency, so be it; I am making a contribution to the necessary flow of learning and growth.

But that does not feel as if it is enough. It will take more than just me, (not pretending, not ignoring, learning and growing, skeptically confident and actively hopeful, within a massive entanglement of uncertainty), to save the world. And though I acknowledge that there are many other passionate learners out there, and I believe this number is growing, today this still does not feel as if it is enough.

I just realized…

I am not seeing the challenge for what it is. I am working here to find a way to influence compassionately with urgency, but how can one influence an inanimate shell of passive belief? To influence, I must first revive. How difficult is that? With rare exception, a zombie apocalypse can only end in the death of a sufficient number to enable control and/or containment. Either the humans are holed up in fortified outposts, or the zombies are killed or mostly killed with the remainder corralled in giant zombie playpens. Seldom is a protagonist able to cajole a zombie.

Wow!

Zombies are single-minded, and difficult to impossible to deter; though I believe they can be fairly easily distracted. Additionally, in most zombie apocalypse stories I am peripherally aware of, I don’t believe zombies die of natural causes. In recent years we have had varying, sporadic success distracting them and/or keeping them in their playpens; so, to me, (because I am not up to the challenge of killing zombies), to distract and to corral appears our only hope. And my job continues to be learning and growth and working to encourage and influence other humans who seek encouragement and influence, and/or those who have yet to be bitten and turned.

So, we give up on the zombies? I know of no way to revive them. I want to believe that deep, deep down in a darkest recess of a zombie soul, there is a desire to come back to life. And I want to believe that somewhere in the folds and crevices of the largely dormant matte gray that serves as the zombie brain, there is a spark of capability to come back to life. But I also believe that this desire and this spark can only be reached and fused by the zombie. Efforts (such as this paragraph) to reach this possibility from the outside, are much more likely to drown their desire, douse their spark, and fuel their single-mindedness.

So, we give up on the zombies.

To some, it may seem impertinent, rude, or even irreverent to turn this thought from a sincere desire for compassionate influence with urgency, to zombies, but by doing so it may help me to focus my effort. If I can identify those single-minded individuals I am unable to influence, and those power structures within which I am ignored, perhaps I can repurpose my habit to benefit those learners who seek encouragement and influence. Most days, and most weeks “those learners” are an exclusive coalition of one; my weekly-written-thought habit is of value only to me. But I continue to learn and grow, and in some small way, that is a contribution.