April's CR Diary

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May 20, 2007

Fighting Weight

Or: "The Danger Of Leaving Our Heroine Alone At Home with ITunes."

I am listening to one of my favorite Kenny Loggins songs, "Conviction of the Heart." I can admit, as a rational agent, that this song is horrendously tacky. Sappy, pathetic. But I love it.

Where are the dreams that we once had?
This is the time to bring them back.

For the last few months I've felt powerfully re-connected to my organizing work, in a way I hadn't in years. It's funny how the thing that caused me to feel re-connected was a horrible management campaign in which the nurses I respect and love and care about were brutally attacked. It just made me focus on what is really important in life, and on the valuable role I am blessed to be able to play in helping these brave health care providers stand up for themselves and their patients.

I've let my CR take a backseat as I focused on organizing, and I've at times used my work as an excuse for being less disciplined than I know I can be. I've allowed myself to think of CR and organizing as somehow mutually exclusive, conflicting priorities.

But over the last few days I've started to think more and more that the two are not conflicting. Rather, I can't expect to do my job, with the demands of long hours and emotional intensity and physical strain, unless I maintain the youthful body and brain that only CR is likely to give me. I look at the brilliant trajectory I see in front of us, as these campaigns are just the beginning of a breakthrough and there are many more to follow. Bigger ones, ones that will be harder, and that will take every ounce of strength I have in me. Or gram, if you prefer.

A few weeks ago, my partner in running the organization said to one of our younger staff members, "It may take me and April twenty years to organize this city," and we looked at each other and said, "But what else are ya gonna do?"

And I had this sudden flash of "I'm in it for the long haul."

Now this isn't exactly new information. I've known for a long time that I would be organizing for a very long while, and though I hope to do more in the arena of health and nutrition as well, that organizing would be the foundation of my being. I just can't escape the fact that helping the working people of this country fight for what they deserve is my main calling in life.

So for awhile that made me think I could be a bit less serious about my CR. I mean, it's hard to really focus on calorie counts when nurses are getting fired for standing up for their co-workers, and the bullets are flying. It's easy to say, "I'm under stress, I deserve a treat."

But then I think about the next twenty years, and the challenges we will face. The long hours I will have to work, the physical and emotional strength it will take just to get through every day. And the consequences of failure.

A dream that will need all the love you can give
Every day of your life for as long as you live!

Raise your paw if you can identify the quote!

The whole purpose of CR, in my opinion, is to live life more fully, longer, more abundantly. If you read my father's book, Jesus and the Pleasures, you'll read about how Christ came so that we might have life more abundantly. I feel the same about CR. That's why it cracks me up when people say, "Why would you want to live that long?" I wonder what kind of lives they must be living now, to say such a thing. I want to be young and healthy in body and brain, while I continue to become wiser and more experienced, so that I can do more of what I'm doing now, just smarter and better and longer.

So I'm working on getting down to fighting weight. Cause I'm planning to be fighting for the foreseeable future. And winning.

CR isn't just about pie in the sky when you don't die. It's about having the strength and health to get through every day, and having that health ten or twenty years from now, so you can do more of the same. I'm not living to see my kids grow up... I've never wanted kids, and I can't imagine that I ever will. But I am living to see a more fair and just world, and to do my tiny part to bring it about. And I am blessed to fight along side of the most wonderful people in the world.

I am also blessed to have a partner in life who is doing all he can to live long enough to see a better world, and to work to bring that world about.

When I was little, watching the Sound of Music, I wondered where I would be when I felt like someone could put the question to me, "And have you found your dream?" and I could truthfully say yes.

Here I am, at age 32 in a suburb of Philadelphia, in a house I bought with the man of my dreams, surrounded by two somewhat demented cats, six blocks from the office I share with the most amazing people I could have ever hoped to count as my friends, and I can honestly say yes, I have found my dream. I live it every day. I whine from time to time that it's hard, that I'm stressed, that I don't see how I can ever live up the the expectations of those around me. But when I come face to face with the reality of my life, I realize that yes, I have found my dream.

My poor mother must be suffering terrible regret that she took me to see "The Sound of Music" when I was too young to know any better.

A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live!

Posted by april at May 20, 2007 3:31 PM

Comments

Posted by: Judith at May 20, 2007 5:58 PM

Posted by: Kathy W. at May 20, 2007 6:17 PM

Posted by: april at May 21, 2007 6:12 AM

Posted by: Sal at May 21, 2007 8:09 AM

Posted by: trish at May 21, 2007 3:48 PM

Posted by: ashley at May 21, 2007 8:59 PM

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