We all live lives of contradiction. A ditch that takes no more than a hop-kick to traverse or a canyon gaping and bottomless divides us from who we strive to be, how we strive to live, the good we know we owe. This is not always easy to attend to.
The need to reconcile our contradictions lives somewhere low and deep inside. There’s a voice — cricket-thin and consistent as a bell — this we know. But, it’s not always easy to attend to.
When we ignore it, we shift uncomfortably. We feel the small pings or pangs and shove them away like old lemon peels — best to avoid the examination, the taste.
But certainly, eventually, such sour zest surfaces, floating in our own conscience, making such an irksome wake that we must consider it. And in considering, we give voice to something’s wrong, I could have done better, I owed more good than I gave.
The next step can be to do nothing and remain planted. Still, the cricket-thin voice sounds, and eventually we will call ourselves into account toward action, movement, purposefulness: We accept, or repent, or reconcile with ourselves or with someone we’ve hurt.
Sometimes the wake we feel, the niggle of something’s wrong, trails from an organization we belong to, an institution we support, a group or family or a team.
And then what is our responsibility? Must we speak? What if we startle to a freeze in a conflict? What if we shudder even considering confrontation? What if we’d rather smile outwardly and wince on the inside only? What if our shaky voice might get lost in the sheer size of what we’re sounding off against?
Each day is long. There is both much to celebrate and much to heap us into a small pile of dismay. There are walks to shovel, soap to buy, mail and weeds and papers to collect. There are business meetings, and broken fan belts, and broccoli to steam for dinner. The trees need water. The birds are hungry and jabbering. Birthdays are coming. Another day. Yes, we have other things to do and we are small in the big of it all.
We have an obligation to tend to ourselves, our hearts and bodies and minds. But, we also have an obligation to tend to our own conscience. The conscience of a family, of an organization, of a church or nation or country is formed one person at a time — no one can mold it for you, hand it to you, sell it to you unless you ignore your own thin cricket strum, your own vibration, your own beat pulsing in your gut.
We live in a time of great shows — media buys, breathy-voiced advertisements, messaging and packaging. We live in a time of spoon-feeding, where all around us we can find mouthfuls to parrot, opinions to use when we don’t have our own, life principles packaged in lists of 10. This isn’t all bad — the band-standing, the circus acts twirling and blinking all around. We are privileged to be able to fill on information. But it is more than we need and not all of it true as told.
Take it in — but don’t stop weighing it carefully. And when something is wrong, be silent for no one. Speak your piece, even if you have to clear your throat repeatedly, even if you shake while you utter, even if it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do.
We all lead lives of contradiction, a ditch or a canyon away from whom we hope to be, the good we know we owe. But, we must expect enough from each other to know we’re at least paying attention, at least tracking what is going on, peering, mulling, absorbing — we owe each other vision and ears.
And, when conscience sounds, we need to speak and then, sometimes, more voices speak, and a chorus begins, builds, rises, into the still air finally breaking it beyond silence. As Walt Whitman said: We will sound our own . . . barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. And the change you need will come.
E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
