It’s two days before the presidential election and I wake early to go fishing after a largely sleepless night. The radio news narrates a scene reminiscent of the darkest days of the Civil Rights Movement, as a gang of pickup-driving Trump supporters in Texas surround and threaten a Biden campaign bus. The next story is about a case before the court to invalidate 120,000 votes already cast in a predominantly Democratic district of Houston. What do I do? Do I stay at home to call voters in swing states? Do I stay glued to CNN, grinding my teeth as I have done for the past couple of weeks? Or do I go fishing as I’ve planned? I decide to go fishing. Later, after I’ve would down watching the ducks on the water chase after the bread I’ve cast out to catch carp, smelled the unmistakable musty smell of fallen autumn leaves decaying and felt the first touch of winter frost on my fingers as I fumble to tie a knot, later, after I’ve caught a breath and my jaw begins to unclench, I can go home and catch up on news and make those calls.
Activists are a special type of people. We open ourselves to seeing and feeling problems in the world that others ignore and we commit ourselves to doing something about them. Consequently, one of the burdens of being an activist is the constant feeling that you could be doing more. If you just organized one more rally, made those few more phone calls, or rented a car and brought your friends down to the big march down in DC, then maybe something would change, history would be different. It’s the maybes that kill you: not knowing if you have done enough and whether you should have pushed yourself to do more. After four decades of being an activist, I wish I knew when enough was enough or not enough. I don’t, and I still feel the push to do more, just as I feel the pull to say I just can’t do anymore, not right now anyway. From all my experience, I’ve come to the unsatisfactory conclusion that you can only do what you can do, no more, and no less.