Sources of Fatigue

Physical illness, depression, and normal aging can all sap one’s energy, but those sources aren’t the ones on my mind today. I’m thinking about what has come to be called “compassion fatigue” and the more recent tag, “outrage fatigue,” a phrase I only ran across last Friday for the first time but instantly recognized as a diagnosis I could claim. “Outrage fatigue,” I noted on Facebook. “Yep. That about sums it up.”

[Until correcting the paragraph above on 10/31, I had typed--but not intended--to say that compassion fatigue "about summed it up." I meant "outrage fatigue," and that's what I had posted on Facebook. I find outrage infinitely more tiring than compassion.]

A friend quickly cautioned that they are counting on our fatigue. (Aren’t these sides fatiguing in themselves? Sadly, they are very real, and that’s discouraging, too.) So, the outragers and their staunch supporters are confident that the rest of us will eventually turn our backs on the struggle for justice: that is my friend’s very important reminder to me.

When I diagnose myself as fatigued by outrage, however, I don’t prescribe for myself or anyone else a permanent flight from reality. Just a break! An evening away from the news, at the very least, because let’s face it – every day there is news to outrage the ideals of civility, decency, and fairness, to use a few simple, old-fashioned terms.

After I’ve had a little break, however, I go back to dig deeper into the idea of compassion and outrage fatigue, and, underneath both, what I find is a despair bred of feelings of helplessness.

If we are called upon, day after day, to feel compassion but feel we can do nothing to ease suffering, we feel helpless, and helplessness is only one step away from despair. If we are outraged, over and over, but feel powerless, we are vulnerable to despair, too. And the horrid thing about despair is that it paralyzes – and when we allow paralysis to get a grip on us, we truly are helpless.

Here’s something else I think I see: a connection between outrage and compassion. If we ourselves are not being personally victimized, why should we feel outrage except for the fact that we also feel compassion for those who are?

So what can we do with our compassion and our outrage?

I took Sunday off from the cares and problems of “the world” and spent hours cleaning floors, catching up on laundry, making soup, filing, recycling, and giving the dog a bath. It felt good to address tasks I could accomplish in a single day, with nothing but determination and raw physical energy. An added benefit (in addition to a clean dog and clean house and clothes) is that taking action to address these ordinary little home jobs also energizes me for larger, more difficult tasks, the kind that can’t be accomplished in a day but require dedication over the long haul. Little successes remind me that I am not powerless.

Neither, of course, am I Superwoman. No one is (and no one is Superman, either). Bigger tasks cannot be resolved in a single day. Family, friendship, community, country – whenever human beings are involved, there’s no shortcut to a long relationship, and I fully expect to leave this world with the struggle for justice still going on. Well, so what? Is that an excuse for shrugging off my own responsibility? I don’t think so.

Other people with good, positive, constructive, feasible ideas are pioneers who break trails for the rest of us. Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, and The Revolution Where You Live: Stories From a 12,000-Mile Journey Through a New America, by Sarah van Gelder will be books that help me move forward.

One day at a time? It’s the only option on life’s table.

Can You Help Staci, Too?

Moving a bookstore is very hard work. Dog Ears Books has been in its present location for over a decade now, but I still remember every move we ever made – from Waukazoo Street in Northport (photo above) to Union Street in Traverse City; from Traverse City back to Northport; from the corner of Mill and Nagonaba to the building next door on Nagonaba (you wouldn’t think moving to a neighboring building would be so much work, but it is); and finally from Nagonaba back to Waukazoo Street. Lots of volunteers stepped in for that last move, and I don’t think David and I could have done it without them. We wouldn’t have had the courage.

Last week I shared a story on Facebook from my daily Shelf Awareness newsletter about booksellers whose move resulted in tragedy. Jim and Staci Stuart bought the former Books and More from Dorothy Dickerson in April of this year and closed for renovations, planning to re-open as Books and Brew on May 1. (That’s in Albion, Michigan, just down the pike a way.) Two days before their opening, they were moving a bookcase – and it fell on Staci, as a result now paralyzed from the waist down.

To make matters worse, because Jim had changed jobs there was a two-day lapse in their health insurance, so most of Staci’s hospital bills, totaling $177,000, are not covered by insurance.

I’ve said before that having a dream (such as owning a bookstore) is a lot easier than making that dream come true and keeping it alive, but I cannot even begin to imagine what Staci Stuart is going through, now in a wheelchair, getting ready to open her bookstore on the 4^th of July after she completes rehab and returns home this Wednesday, June 21^st.

There’s no trust fund or retirement pension behind my own bookstore’s year-to-year continued existence, but I have to send a check to this bookseller in Albion, facing challenges far greater than my own. It’s little enough and all I can manage from this distance. If you can help out, too, follow this link to see how to do it. 

Staci, an independent bookseller is never alone. We are colleagues in a mutually supportive community. It's just one more aspect of this life that makes the dream worthwhile.