Why I’m not giving up on a rotten future.

queeranarchism:

Something a little personal that I just wrote for a comrade who expressed despair at the massive gloomy future ahead of us. I thought it might be worth sharing even if it is a little personal and emotional. 

I’m not giving up on a rotten future because below all the large scale despair is always a diverse small-scale reality. 

As someone who has been depressed, I know there were moments of laughter and joy even within my depressed life. As an anarchist, I know we can create moments and places and communities of freedom even within a capitalist state and they can never stop us completely. As a historian, I know people wrote songs and cried with laughter and fell in love inside nazi concentration camps.

We live in a world that prioritized large scale and long term events because it prioritized power, but small things matter. Every moment of joy and beauty in our small scale lives is precious. Every moment we can create matters. 

When we stop trying to save lives, stop trying to create quality of life, and stop trying to give life joy and laughter, we waste those precious potential moments of beauty. That’s a terrible thing to waste.

So basically I keep on going because the people and the moments in my life and the ways I can help others are all incredibly valuable regardless of how long they last and how bad things get. I want to fight for them as long as I can.