Within Reach of Your Arm

[WilliamPitt]

For my daughter.



(Image: Chris Devers)

Within Reach of Your Arm
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Friday 05 September 2014

My daughter is walking now...well, actually, she's running, in the stagger-sloppy way of all toddlers that careens close to the edge of disaster. Against all evident laws of gravity, she manages in her travels to hold it together. God watches over drunks and small children, it has been said, probably because they walk the world exactly the same way. I watch my little girl stumblebum her way across the yard, and my breath catches when she careens, and then she rights herself, and rumbles on.

I am her father. It is my sworn intention that she grow up to be and do as she pleases - if she wants to sell apples out of a barrel by the side of the road, or go to law school, or make matches in a factory, or become an Olympic athlete, or shine shoes, or whatever, because it makes her happy, then I will be happy, because it is what she wants to do - but I stand before you a man afraid, because it is also my sworn intention to give her the chance to choose her own path as best I can.

I'm not sure how much of that is going to be within my power to do for her. It's a hell of a thing to raise a child in the dying empire of a dying country stapled to a dying economic paradigm within a dying ecosystem. Corporations are people, my friends, but actual people don't matter as much as fracking and oil spills and coal exports and tar sands and pipelines and endless, bottomless greed.

Here's a fact: the ocean is coming. Big cities and small towns alike, especially along the Eastern seaboard, are watching their shorelines disappear as the waters lap higher and higher against the steel and concrete of our seeming invincibility. The world saw what happened to New York City and New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy, and according to all available estimates, that is but the beginning. NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia has spent $43 million over the last five years to shore up its collapsing beachhead. Five years on, a third of that work has been washed away.

(snip)

Don't you worry, my love, I'll whisper to her. The multibillion dollar F-35 boondoggle that doesn't work and nobody wants is protecting you. The billion-dollar Osprey deathtrap that kills Marines almost every year is protecting you. Exactly fifty-three cents of every tax dollar I pay is spent on the "defense" of you, so they tell me, a vast swath of that money going to the CIA and the NSA, so if you're not happy about it later in life and happen to mention it, believe me, they'll hear it.

Hush little baby, don't say a word... Papa's gonna buy you a new Blackbird... called the SR-72 that goes Mach 6... and if it doesn't work, they'll tax me for the fix... wait... that's a terrible nursery rhyme.

Welcome to your future, little girl.

Or, you know, not.

All I have, all you have, all we have, is the power to do good and right within reach of our arm. I can't defeat ISIS, or suck the oil and oil-cleanup contaminants out of the Gulf, or imprison the people who wrecked the economy and laughed all the way to the bank, or imprison the people who started wars based on lies and torture and also laughed all the way to the bank, or break the "defense" industry over my knee and redirect their engorged funding toward the greater good, or stop the seas from rising, or the polar caps from melting. I can't end greed, or hunger, or hatred, or disease...I can try, and do every day, but it is the equivalent of yelling at a thunderstorm. No matter how loud I shout, I still get wet.

I can do the best I can within reach of my arm, one reach at a time. I can remember, and hold dear to heart, the verse of activist Daniel Berrigan:

Some stood up once, and sat down
Some walked a mile, and walked away
Some stood up twice, then sat down,
"I've had it" they said.
Some walked two miles, then walked away.
"It's too much," they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
They were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked.
They walked the earth,
They walked the waters,
They walked the air.
"Why do you stand," they were asked, "and why do you walk?"
"Because of the children," they said,
"And because of the heart,
"And because of the bread,"
"Because the cause is the heart's beat,
And the children born
And the risen bread."

Sometimes, the simplest answers are correct. If I - if we - hold to this simplicity, hold it tight and never let it go, if we do that good within our reach, matters will change for real and for true, and my daughter will surely get the chance to know what it is to also reach, to fly, to rise, to become. As will yours. And yours. And yours.

And yours.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26002-within-reach-of-your-arm

[antigop]

1. Oh, wow. Proud to be the first rec! nt

[adirondacker]

2. Excellent Piece Will. nt

[Xyzse]

3. Drunks, fools and little children!

I enjoyed the read.

Thanks,
Y

[shraby]

4. This is not just a good read, it's a fantastic read! You go Will!

[shanine]

5. Thank you, Will

I needed to read this

[progressoid]

6. "dying empire of a dying country stapled to a dying economic paradigm within a dying ecosystem"

Yep. Sobering.

I need a drink.

[WilliamPitt]

7. Up

[No Vested Interest]

8. Beautiful words, beautiful put. And the bonus of the poetry

of Daniel Berrigan.
I am grateful.

[RobertEarl]

9. All the best to you and yours, Will

Sometimes I wonder... no, i don't wonder, i know...

If People would all rise together and stand for good, the world would follow.

[calimary]

10. Yeah, Will, that is just about the best you can give her.

That's all I really have to give mine. It is as simple as one person - doing one thing within their own reach. Just do one thing. One thing, how-ever large or small. May not seem like much. But that will be one thing more that will have been done, as opposed to nothing being done at all.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Ashes and Glass

What if all tomorow brings is ashes and glass
And I can't tell you child, "this too shall pass"
If all the world were windswept, cold and gray
And in the end there's nothing left to say

If all the silicon and best laid plans
Became the master, and the fall of man
If all the earth were baked to hard red clay
Not so far from where we are today

Ah well anyway

Come on darlin', swing and sway
Daddy gonna find us a better way
And if that better way don't float
Daddy gonna find us a tighter boat

And if that tighter boat don't sail
Grab a bucket babe, and start to bail
And if that bucket spring a leak
Little miss, we're up the creek

What if fire came raining on the hills
And mountains made of rusting Coupe De Villes
And all God's children find themselves alone
And all the poets took to throwing stones

Guess we're on our own
No way out and no way home

Come on baby, it's time to sing
Daddy gonna grab that old brass ring
And if that old brass ring don't fit
Daddy gonna get to fixin it

And if that old brass ring stays broke
Daddy gonna buy you a billy goat
And if that billy goat don't bark
Gonna give that goat the old kick start
Old kick start

What if all that was left was ashes and glass
And I can't tell you child, "this too shall pass"
And if those four horsemen can't be turned away
And everyone's too paralyzed to pray

Too paralyzed to pray
And the jury's out on judgement day
And there ain't nothing left to say
Nothing left to say

Come on baby we can fly
Daddy's got a stack of alibis
Alibis shot full of holes
Come on child, let's rock and roll

And if that roll takes us to France
Teach them Froggies how to dance
Keep on dancin', sing the tune
We'll be dancin' all around the moon

And if that big old moon go bust
Well ashes to ashes, baby, dust to dust
Baby it's time for one last rave
Keep on dancin' on our own graves

On our own graves
Keep on dancing
On our own graves
Keep on dancing
Keep on dancing

[MindPilot]

12. Righteous rant Will, but can I ask a serious and honest question?

Why? Why, with everything you know to be true about what a shit-pot of deterioration the world is become--in your own words, "...raise a child in the dying empire of a dying country stapled to a dying economic paradigm within a dying ecosystem."--do you choose to bring a child into this world? It actually seems kind of cruel to have a child, and then say hey, kiddo, I brought you into a world that by any reasonable assessment is completely fucked and will only get worse, probably much worse, but well, good luck!

[WilliamPitt]

14. Because

an old friend and I had a debate a long time ago about how to fix what was broken. I quacked about politics, direct action, etc., and he rejoindered with a statement that has stayed with me ever since: "If you want to change the world for the better, have children, raise them right, and send them out into the world."

People are needed to make the necessary changes for the people. That means we need to make people - granted, at a decelerated rate, which is why she will be the only one we have - who are raised right, so they can make that change. I'm not going to live forever, and neither are you. Someone has to be here to do the work, as they choose to do it.

Plus, I love my wife, and she wanted children, and her MS made having even one a long gamble. We rolled the dice, and created an amazing young woman.

I don't think one is going to upend the applecart any more than it is upended. The Duggars we ain't.

[MindPilot]

15. Cool...thanks for the response. n/t

[KittyWampus]

13. Lovely. I'd like to hear more about your being a father and raising a daughter.

[WilliamPitt]

16. Ask and receive

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24360-william-rivers-pitt-the-astonishing-privilege-of-fatherhood

[Playinghardball]

17. Again....AWESOME!!

[grahamhgreen]

18. Think in terms of the grand sweep of history... We will prevail:)

[Uncle Joe]

19. That's a great essay, WilliamPitt.

Thanks for sharing.

[WilliamPitt]

20. Saturday night

kick, for the hell of it.