photo by learnsomethingnew
Gloria Steinem spoke on a moderated panel at the California Governor’s conference this fall. At one point, moderator Farai Chideya asked feminist Steinem what her little 9 year-old girl self would say to the other panelist’s 9-year-old girl self.
In the ensuing discussion, Steinem suggested that “who you are at 9 or 10 is who we are at 60.” She noted that young kids at nine or ten have absolute clarity about their passions. They’re climbing trees and exploring the world and haven’t yet added the word impossible to their vocabularies. Tweens are “full of wonder.”
Given I’m in a major career transition, and have spent more than a year struggling with the notion of what I should do versus what my passions could fuel, Steinem’s comments gave me pause.
My inner child
As I hit middle school, I became thoroughly obsessed with social activism, in particular, saving the planet. I read about recycling and ocean pollutions and worried endlessly about the plight of sea turtles eating plastic bags, which is probably why the Santa Monica Plastic Bag Monster stunt tickled me recently.
While communities were just beginning to offer curbside recycling programs, our family always had the most recycling bins out in our neighborhood. In fact, my mom’s best friend used to tease her about the extent of our recycling: stacks of newspapers; bundles of junk mail and magazines; glass, aluminum and tin bottles, jars and cans. Though I realized that one family recycling wasn’t putting a dent in the landfill problem, I dreamt of a day when everyone recycled as much of their garbage as possible.
In the 5th grade, I also began to realize that not everyone was equal, which lit my interest in social justice, as well as equitable and utilitarian treatment of all people. I wanted to be unwaveringly fair in my actions, not just self-serving. I sought to do what was right for everyone, even if it meant a temporary dip in my own life. My experience staying silent while another kid was tease mercilessly for being different definitely contributed to that philosophy.
Full Stop
But I hit the metaphorical brick wall in high school.
At fifteen, I helped lead the charge against a 6-community referendum to break up a school district. Adults rallied support for break up of the district using socioeconomic snobbery and even mock seances — yes, seriously. After forming a student group, we attended public meetings and canvassed the neighborhood, though derided by local school administrators and parents on the other side. The teenagers fighting the referendum spent hours in the library researching the economic and social costs of breaking up the district; in reality, more regionalization made fiscal sense than less.
And we fought the good fight. I remember the day one classmate approached me and told me that she could never do what I was doing, but she was 100% behind me. Someone needed to take a stand, it just wasn’t going to be her.
But we lost. And the district was dissolved. Ironically, the prognostications of teens came to be. Over the next five years schools taxes shot up, the performance of the athletic teams (with slimmer pickings) diminished, and the number of courses offerings declined. While we were satisfied to be right, we wished we had been wrong.
A few tiny details slammed the breaks on activism for me. Afterwards, a story trickled down through the ranks. A lot of favors were owed all the way up to the governor’s office. One way or another this district was being dismantled, even though it completely contradicted the Governor’s very public support of regionalization to streamline costs throughout the state. When people questioned the legality of using a referendum to dissolve the district, all copies of the district charter mysteriously vanished.
Powerful forces beyond our control worked hard to ensure the appropriate “democratic” outcome. The people were squelched. The little guy was silenced. The power brokers made a decision, and the die were set. And at 15 and 16, I just wasn’t ready to maneuver the shady back room dealings of politics. Though I fight fair, I hadn’t yet accepted that most at that level are just playing to win. It’s personal, not community- focused.
Waking up
This year, I found my spark again. Watching Obama’s team out campaign the GOP made me realize that I am no less capable of gaming the system in the name of the greater good. Sometimes you have to play by the other team’s rules just to get in the game, but you don’t have to dump your own values in the process.
Excessive volunteerism allowed me to develop the skill sets I need to reconnect with activism. I’ve revisited the development and ongoing review of the strategy that can take me from A to B. As much as I hate public speaking, I’m more comfortable rallying the troops and inspiring people to act than anytime in recent memory. And I’m well-versed in the nitty gritty of data management and manipulation.
At the moment, my search is on for the right opportunity to splice with my aptitude, because I’m pretty sure that who I was at ten is who I’ll be at thirty. What feels like a quarterlife quagmire seems to be me coming full circle.
But enough about me; take your own trip down memory lane. What motivated your ten-year old self to act? Who did you want to be when you grew up? Are you there yet?
