How to find Motivation

Howard Zinn, in his essay The Optimism of Uncertainty, states; “Understand that the major media 
will not tell you of all the acts of resistance taking place every day in the society-the strikes, protests, 
individual acts of courage in the face of authority” (Zinn,78). Having this realization is one of the key 
reasons for why I started to have hope for the improvement of our planet and society after the election of 
Donald Trump. There are “millions of people working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is 
usually about the death of strangers” (Hawken, 56). I don't know what it is about the media that does not 
allow for stories of resistance to be newsworthy. This makes it so that the general public is in a constant 
state of despair from having to hear horrible stories and not enough stories of hope. Through this we start 
to be conditioned to have no hope and no reason to get involved because the world is so horrible beyond 
repair. Which is the perfect way to keep a society complacent. If the world is going to end soon and 
anything that we do won’t have a big impact why even get involved? 

This of course doesn't work on everyone and there are so many people who decide to get involved.  
Once you start to get involved you no longer need the media to give you those stories because the people 
you surround yourself with will constantly talk about wonderful actions happening to improve our 
community. You get to see strong inspiring people persevere in the face of oppression. This helps to 
motivate everyone who gets to meet those individuals and makes us stronger as a society because you no 
longer feel like you are alone in the fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental degradation 
etc. 
 
Getting involved has really helped me to feel less helpless and to gain agency. It has also helped 
me to feel like I have a community that I belong to. Before this everything felt unfixable and I  
felt very alone. There were just too many issues and not enough people doing anything about it. 
Although getting involved has been beneficial in many ways it has not fixed all the negative  
feelings that I have. I no longer feel helplessness and lonely but there are many days that I feel like I 
should just give up on the movement, that it would have been easier if I never become interested in these issues. 
But through writing this reflection I realized that it's a lie. Everyone is aware of what is going on in the 
world because I see ordinary people who are not involved talk about about all the issues currently happening 
with such sadness. I used to be in there place and I don't think I want to go back to that. It seems like
a harder mental state to be in. 


When I first started this reflection I wrote “At this point in my capstone experience I am still unsure 
about what I would like to do”. I now take those words back. The start of this semester was very hard
 for me for no particular reason (well maybe depression) and I felt very uninspired and I wanted to give up. 
After writing this reflection I know what I want to do. 

The organization that I am most interested in is The Wildland Conservancy. The project that they have 

available for students bridges social justice and environmental justice issues perfectly, which is
something that I think about often. (It is what I wrote my identity paper on for ENST 395.) 
Through this I hope to be able to create a path for the local community for merging environmental 
issues with social issues, if it has not been done yet. If it has been done already then that is completely 
fine because I would like this type of work to continue so that it eventually becomes the norm.