The Zen of Moxie

I came across Robert Egger's blog today where he said, "Shut up and feed the poor". Now, he was talking about yesterday's Supreme Court decision about the limitations on non-profit advocacy in the public arena but I also think that the meaning I get from his words is "stop talking about it, stop thinking about it, stop arguing about it and just do it". I wake up nights and wonder why I ever thought this would work. 10 years ago when we started the press, I remember thinking that social enterprise was an amazing idea. Why not teach kids in foster care a trade and the skills to help them be successful? We live in a society where it’s easier sometimes to write a check than it is to reflect on what happens every day in our own communities and while I look at that in the same way I look a Harlequin romance reader (at least they’re reading) it limits us and it limits our ability to truly change our world. Until every person in our own backyard, isn’t “left behind” from birth (to paraphrase Geoffrey Canada), how can we ever really expect to make a difference?

Or perhaps that’s the point. It’s lonely to take a stand…more people would do it if it were glamorous (or if I looked like Jennifer Aniston).

So why did I do this? Lots of people ask me that and I try to explain it and sometimes it sinks in and sometimes it doesn’t. I developed Moxie because I was no longer willing to sit by quietly and abandon our children. Yes, our children…mine and yours. Some of them are really unpleasant, some of them don’t like you, and some of them are already lost. But we have chosen to let someone else deal with them rather than confront the ugliness that gets them into foster homes where people don’t care about them, their caseworker might only visit them once every 30 days, and you and I don’t have to think about them. Yes, we protect them from abuse and neglect and there is an honorable intention behind that but most of us don’t take even an hour out of our week to mentor them, guide them, or teach them alternatives. Agencies all over this country struggle to recruit good foster parents…there’s never enough and too many people foster for the wrong reasons. Mentoring programs scramble around for money every year…and can’t get funding to support caring people in the community who try to help. Soup kitchens run out of food and we call hunger pangs in 5-year-olds “food insecurity” And we lose our children, more and more of them every year.

One definition of moxie is “aggressive energy” and I’ve come to realize that more of us need to get aggressive and angry to deal with ourselves and our role in this mess. But how can we when the people who are closest to us, the people who do the same work as us are tired, frustrated, and scared? There are days when I just want to "get along", when I want nothing more than to have a job where I don't even have to think about the choices I make and whether they'll help or hurt someone. But if we don't do it, who will and can we live with the consequences if nobody tries?

I still wouldn't mind looking like Jennifer Aniston though.