Writing a letter a day to number 10 I have inherited the title of Activist and even learned to accept it and use it although I must confess I do so with a certain amount of discomfort or awkwardness. The reality is that I am 62 years old, a bit doddery on my old pins, a life time sufferer of mental health issues with limited mobility and now dependent on DLA for my survival.
So what happens when you become an activist? Well, not a lot that is personally helpful really, it’s a convenient box in which others can place you, it gives them some kind of frame of reference but it is a somewhat restrictive box. It becomes a focus for the expectations of others, sometimes hopes and even demands on occasion and people can become mightily vexed when, in order to maintain your own integrity, you refuse to meet those expectations.
It is a peculiarity of the world in which we live that by and large people are defined by what they do. In my job as a community and youth worker I frequently asked people who they were and they invariably answered with. Student or their job of work, and when I responded by saying, ‘No, who are you?’ they often could not answer or didn’t know how to answer. It’s hard to get outside the boxes we are educated into.
I wear quite a few hats, like activist, community and youth worker, photographer, but they are not who I am. I am a warm, caring, sensitive, thoughtful, artistic, creative, intuitive and eloquent man. I have a profound sense of being as a part of nature and delight in the natural world and, above all, I know who I am. Sharing this recently with a new acquaintance, he was filled with sorrow because he didn’t know who he was, felt profoundly lost, and thought I was pulling a fast one on him even though he clearly perceived I was being sincere. He was unable to suspend his disbelief in the face of something so alien to him.
So I am wary of being called an activist, it is not a box I sit comfortably in although I accept that it is somewhat useful for others in the world in which we live. What concerns me is that I feel it in some way disables people from being pro-active in their own lives. Activism is in danger of being something that only activists do rather than an expression of being. I write a letter a day because I would not sit easy in my bones if I saw such monumental injustices being dished out daily by the government and made no response. Activism is then, for me, that point at which my inner self says, a line has been crossed and I must act or forever feel remorse, frustrated anger and depression and a victim of circumstances. Activism is an essential part of being human and an expression of my own, individual, inner power which we all inalienably have but, perhaps, fear to choose to exert for whatever reason. It is to step into the unknown to face unknown consequences, it is to take a risk in a world which has become risk averse, but it is a risk towards a fuller life and one very much worth taking.
https://www.keithordinaryguy.org.uk
