You Must Be This Tall To Ride

Ever since the Marathon I've been holding down the impulse to write about the concept of Enough. Regardless of the situation, you are never doing Enough. In the wake of the Marathon bombings I saw a flurry of activity from people who wanted everyone upset about Boston to know that they hadn't been upset Enough about Syria, or Afghanistan, or India, or the Sudan, or whatever topic that particular person is upset about and wishes everyone else would get upset about too. I see this version of Enough all the time and it makes me feel vaguely violent. It's the political equivalent of walking into a wake and screaming "Do you know how many people die each year? Why didn't you cry this hard for them?" There is a scale of grief. You care about the neighbor dying, but you care more when someone in your house does.

I can't stop hate in the world. I can't even stop it in my HOA. Society is a boulder we continually push uphill. If enough people stop pushing, it crushes those remaining. Sometimes, you get a miracle. Sometimes the boulder clears the top and you can breathe for a second before it starts rolling backward. Trayvon got that breath of relief. Rekia did not. They're still dead. Hate can't push a pebble so we tap it down to push on. If you tell me there is no point to my effort I have to wonder why. How have you defined Enough? Since you are obviously doing it, is it working? Have you solved what you wanted to solve?

I didn't think so.

Some define Enough as a constant engagement with those around them. Some define Enough as an abdication of their daily life in favor of continual activism. Some define Enough as radicalizing and joining a militant group. But the struggle continues. Enough isn't even enough. The Sandy Hook Parents and 90 percent of the American people united to call for a bill making tiny commonsense restrictions to our gun laws. It wasn't Enough. Like Gold Star Parents or the 9/11 Widows the Sandy Hook Parents are now accused of doing too much. If they had just done things differently, then magic would happen and our efforts would be Enough. Bostonians defined Enough as staying indoors while their first responders responded to bombings, murders, carjackings, and shootings. To many people who don't live in Boston, this wasn't Enough. The city of Boston exists because the native people of the area didn't do Enough to repel the invading force of European settlement. In 1642 my ancestor was granted a farm of 92 acres in Watertown (an upgrade from his previous 10 acre homestall). To the people who lived in Watertown before it was Watertown, before he arrived, was there the same inability to define Enough? The struggle is the struggle is the struggle.

To the people who are upset when I don't care Enough, when I don't march Enough, when I don't define Enough the same way they do I say I am out here. I am pushing. We are all together in wanting peaceful coexistence. We are all together in rejecting extremism and radicalism. We are all working on our side of the boulder. It's going to crush us all. Look for those moments to breathe. Make them enough to push you forward. America is largely safe of bombs in public spaces. I'd like that to be true for every nation. I won't squander the privilege of that safety by accepting it may end. There are struggles all over the world. The boulders will always be rolling. I don't deny our part in them, but push on the surfaces I can touch with the strength I have. It might not be Enough for you, but it will have to be enough for me.


*The tipping point for this rant was this Salon article, more specifically the passage: "Don’t look the other way and tell me that you signed a petition or voted for John Kerry or whatever. The fact is that whatever dignified private opinions you and I may hold, we did not do enough..." without then defining what Enough looked like.