New wave optimism?

What am I even doing in my life? 

Howard Zinn questions, "Is an optimist necessary a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time? (pg. 79) (I had to look up blithe because uhhh, I don't know what that means, so for those of you who are also like uhhh, here you go: According to Merriam-Webster, Blithe: of a happy lighthearted character or disposition-a blithe spirit-blithe enjoyment.

       In this post, I am going to talk about my future service learning experience in ENST Capstone and what I seek to gain from it. I also want to talk about this perceived reality of being an "optimist" or "pessimist" (why does it have to be such a dichotomy). All in all, I am going to blend together these two topics... So, stick with me! I'm not usually this concise in my writings, where I give the reader a full on layout of what will be addressed within the confines of the reading, but hey this is a blog post, I'm going to try new things. 

·        It's my last semester in undergraduate schooling. (champagne bottle pops open) I am truly invigorated to take my next steps, to use the knowledge I have accumulated into the world of beauty, chaos, uncertainty, and growth. I feel ready, but one questions lingers in the back of my mind: 

      What am I even doing in my life? RED FLAG, RED FLAG. 

This is the core question every college student is asked at Aunt Linda's house during the holidays, where all you want to do is lock yourself into the bathroom. This is the question we ask ourselves when we're shoving spoon fulls of Ben & Jerry's Ice cream into our mouth at midnight writing a paper that's due at 10 am the next day. 

·        But.. this question turns realistic when we are at the last stretch of our college career and summer is in sight.. which means what am I even doing in my life? or what should I be doing with my life? 

·        I am an anxious person all around (if that wasn't obvious) but I do feel that the ENST service-learning based capstone class is going to prepare me for that next step into my life of social and environmental advocacy. It gives me an opportunity to breathe and obtain hands-on experience working in the community I have lived for almost four years. It gives me some time to transition from an in-class mindset to working in a given field, away from the setting of schooling.                                          

          The service learning project that I will be taking part in is the North Coast Arts Integration Project (NCAIP). The goal of this project it to bring forth different mediums of art to eight different rural elementary and middle schools in order to improve students' creative thinking, academic performance, and reasoning skills. This is through a series of workshops and in-class lessons educators from this community bring into the classroom setting. Today, I met with the coordinator for the project, Sarah Peters, to go over what is expected of me as a student and overall areas of interest I have within the project. We have unofficially decided that my job title is "Teaching and Pedagogical Assistant" where for three hours a week I will be helping an educator produce a musical theatre piece with a classroom of kiddos, work to organize the overall curriculum writings, and research other Arts Integration projects   that are happening nation wide in hopes of finding new ideas for the NCAIP. I am very excited to be able to have an opportunity to work with children on various art projects and endeavors. I've been thinking a lot about Howard Zinn's article, where future change lies heavily within the newer generations. Who knows, maybe I could really get some of these kids to think differently about the ever-changing environment around them through groovy things like acting and painting.                                                                                                                                                                       I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be an optimist versus a pessimist among needed social and environmental change. Often times, environmentalists have this perception of being an optimist for environmental change to be someone who only shops local and organic, someone who stops everything and runs to a "tree sit in." Or as Zinn pointed out, "a blithe, sappy whistler among dark times." On the opposite side, someone who is a pessimist regarding environmental change according to the mainstream environmental movement would be a person who doesn't think that we need to worry about global warming because we're all going to die anyway. But what if we reinvent what we come to accept optimist and pessimism to mean? Almost as if it becomes a new wave of optimist thinking?                                                                                                                                                        

      This way of viewing what it means to be an optimist (specifically in regards to environmental justice), in my opinion, would be someone who has optimistic values to the future of our planet, but feels pessimistic to the current state of our political, social, and capital system. Catch my drift? So, as you seek to bring change to the current system, being optimistic that change can in fact occur, you are at the same rate pessimistic to our current president's values and the overall actions that have been done by the government. Pessimistic to the current system, but through social advocacy and a desire to revolutionize capitalist ideologies swarming our system, optimistic for a new beginning becomes a reality. This idea makes me think of Amiri Baraka's performance speech called, "Someone Blew Up America." Baraka is a super cool human, the founder of Black Arts Theater in Harlem during the time of the Black power and Black arts movement. Through his speech he is pessimistic to the broken system America has, the war on terror the western world has created. Yet, he is optimistic to expose this broken system, optimistic to spread awareness to the audience in hopes of bringing about some change. 
       To blend together these two ideas, I seek to become optimistic with my post-grad self, straying away from a pessimistic view of "I'm never going to go anywhere with my life and I can't produce any social change because I'm just one human." NO. Hey, this service-learning project is one step into change, one-step for spreading awareness and human empathy. While I am optimistic that I can bring about environmental change to the communities I inhibit, whether that be forming a social justice troupe or making sure those in my life feel safe in their space, I am also quite pessimistic to the current state of America's political realm. How can we bring about environmental and social equity if that orange man is in our way? Well, let's stay hopeful and patient. This too shall pass, and I'm optimistic to bring about change through each step in my life.