Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by
Tilar J. Mazzeo.
Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.
It’s about a bus driver.
It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.
And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.
And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.
and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,
“Where do you need to go?”
And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.
So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.
I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.
We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.
And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.
the left will fail and keep failing as long as it doesn’t offer joy or a vision of the future. Like chris smalls and the union organizers didn’t win by writing scathing op-eds about Amazon and sending out long dry newsletters with donation links about Amazon’s unfair labor practices to employees, they won by literally meeting people where they were at, at the bus stop where the workers gathered to go home, and hosting cookouts and bonfires. He ate with people and smoked with them and talked to them about their lives and the job, about their rights as workers and how life could be better. He brought joy to them!!! And food and community!! And that’s how one of the biggest victories for labor in a century was won. If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution
Man, this is such a perfect analogy. “Chipped”… Just damaged enough for it to show at times, but not nearly broken enough to warrant fixing. And so often does the chipped cup turn itself to show its undamaged side.
This may be one of the most fascinating and attractive things I have ever seen. They IMPROVISED that?
Yes they did! God, I love Jack and Jill competitions, they are the coolest. They’re like the best part of a dance social (spontaneity; leaning into the lead-follow connection; the joy of dancing with different people and not just your choreography partner, so you get the same moves and steps with different style and feeling and nuance) but combined with the absolutely insane level of skill that you get when people have been dancing as amateurs and professionals for literal years.
Here’s another, one of my favorite dance videos online. Trendlyon Veal and Robert Royston are both West Coast Swing dancers, so there’s no crossover appeal, but look at them. LOOK AT THEM GO.
my favorite video game quest trope is “HELP US, THEY ARE STEALING OUR ANCIENT ARTIFACT. THANK YOU FOR HELPING US, AS A REWARD YOU MAY HAVE OUR ANCIENT ARTIFACT”
the ancient artifact was less important than having agency in its distribution
Nothing is more important than keeping it out of the hands of the British museum
