I went into this weekend’s Whidbey Island Bioneers Conference expecting friendship, fun, and education. What I got came as a surprise: an eye-opening opportunity to reevaluate what it means to be human in these times, and a serious challenge to live my own life more intentionally. I learned—or re-learned—that my own compelling causes are just faces on a whole world in transition, and that there are as many roads forward as there are people to travel them.
After spending a weekend discovering the affinities and differences among “the choir”, I have learned that this activism business is not a matter of “us” fixing “them”. “Us” is a nebulous concept. The Great Work is bigger than that, better than that, and harder than that. I have shaken off the delusion that someone else can fall into line and allow the future of which I dream. I must create it myself, alone and alongside each fellow dreamer.
The future we hope for is coming, and it needs each of us.