Rooting out Evil: Scaled to Fit

---by Micheal

I was out in the yard, pulling up some stray crabgrass, listening to my teenage son rant about the sorry state of the world, hypocrites, injustice, etc. Ah, the idealist indignation of youth. I remembered being just like him -- full of rage at the sorry state of the world. As an idealistic young man, I was all full of fire to "fix" the world which all the stupid old people had screwed up. I would fight injustice. I would stand up for what was right.

I also recalled feeling a sort of moral outrage at old men and women whom I saw out putzing in their yards. How could they just fuss over stupid grass and flowers, when the world around them was so screwed up and needed fixing. How could they be so selfish or blind?

But then, look at me now. I had become one of those old men in his yard. I was doing nothing more heroic than pulling up crabgrass spouts. And, it's not like I was just taking a break from my saving the world. This was pretty much my life now. What happened to that idealistic young man's vision of rooting out evil? Improving the world?

Fatigue, I figure. Maybe burnout. Over the years, I'd fought and championed causes which I truly felt would improve the world. I put hundreds of hours into what I saw as righting wrongs, attempts to make things better. They did not change one blasted thing. The world went on exactly as it had been.

All this time, I'd been trying to carefully steer the world around dangers I saw in the road. Finally, I'd realized the steering wheel I held was bright red plastic and said "Fisher Price" on the hub. I'd been in the back seat all along.

A fitting flip-side to Shakespear's famous quote about greatness would be: Some men are born to be marginal. Others have marginality thrust upon them. It's not an easy thing reconciling one's inner idealistic youth with one's actual marginality. Denial prolongs the process. I know it took me awhile to catch on.

So, here I am now, on my knees in the yard, pulling up crabgrass. The only "world" I'm able to have any impact on is a few acres in size. The bigger world might be morphing into a New Eden, or going to hell in a handbasket. Either way, there's not a blasted thing I've been able to about it. What I can do, is make my little acre a tidy little world. When I see evil (scaled down to mean: crabgrass), I can root it out.

Looking back, I wonder if those old men and women I grumbled about had also been idealistic youths, spent 30 or 40 years of their lives campaigning to improve the world, only to see that the world didn't change. Maybe they were just burned out. Like me now, they'd decided to focus on a smaller world.