Hold tight to your corner of the world.

The more I lump things together, the more everything makes sense.

If you are truly committed to your own liberation, then you are truly committed to the liberation of every being. The two can’t be separate.

If you are devoted to Reproductive Justice then you ought to be devoted to equity in education, housing, food access, and beyond. They are interwoven. 

We don’t get to care in silos. Our ripple effects are too powerful for isolationist thinking. Our devotion is a sacred choice. However, we do have to choose the corner of the world that we work within. We can’t dedicate ourselves to every issue that compels us. When I try to work in every direction at once, I get lost and I get ineffective. I get tired, and I get hopeless. Things are too urgent for us to be doing directionless work. We need to hone in where we are compelled to be. We can’t sit on the board of every organization with a compelling mission. We have to focus our time and energy on a place that moves us to action. 

What I am asking you here, though, is to hold the awareness of how the corner you choose to dwell in contributes to our collective liberation. This can even be true if your corner was chosen for you and circumstances make it so you cannot leave anytime soon. 

The most effective way to do nothing is to try to do everything.

If your brain starts to try to deceive you into believing you are not doing enough, trace the work you do back to collective liberation. We are all bound up together, and the corner you’ve chosen is yours to make as free as you can. We can’t all work together in one corner because our true freedom takes all kinds. We need the growers, the feeders, the organizers, the deliverers, the designers, the builders, the writers, the loud ones, the shelf-stockers, the swimmers, the runners, the yellers, the singers, the sweepers, the visionaries, the destroyers. We need each person in their corner. Devoted to their corner. 

Your corner might change over time, and that is right and good and important. Your corner might be taken over, and I urge you to shimmy around until you can reclaim your space within it. This is something that can’t be taken from you. This is the collective work that will set us free. We need you to know and love your part of the work, recognize its place within the collective work, and honor its importance in transporting us to the world we know is possible. 

How we do anything is how we do everything.

This week’s intentionality exercise: