"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution," a quote attributed (wrongly)
to Enma Goldman*, is yet one that expresses perfectly my feelings over all the decades of activist struggles. The quote was brought to mind again after an encounter yesterday with a very earnest soul.
There is a certain mindset within any kind of activism that says that any moment of joy, of laughter, of enjoying a brief respite, in the face of the serious activist struggles, is somehow blasphemous. How DARE we laugh, or smile, crack a joke, look at beauty. The issues and causes for which we fight are too serious, too important, to waste time on frivolities, says this particular dour mindset. We have probably all encountered this thinking, been on the receiving end of its censurious moral superiority.
To this calvinist mindset, I have one response. MEADOW MUFFINS.** There is a strain if thinking that runs through many belief systems that declare that suffering, denial, unending toil and sacrifice are our lot in life, our way to salvation and the promised land, after we are dead. Now, I cannot speak for anyone else, but in my belief system, Joy and pleasure, love and beauty, ARE essential. They fuel and feed us, sustain us in our struggles, give us strength and hope. We NEED the smiles in the light moment, the joy of watching children and kittens ad puppies gamboling, the outstretched hand, the stunning beauty of a sunrise, a mountain vista. Without these things, what is the bloody point??
So, I don't know about anyone else, but I intend to laugh and wonder, to love my kittyand my fiends, to enjoy my chocolate and my wine, as I continue working with my sisters and brothers, to make this a world worthy of all of us.
*read Alix Kate Shulman on the origin of that meme.
**those in the west understand.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I try to dance regularly. Especially, when nobody is watching. 
Always being serious regardless of any noble objectives, will undoubtedly make it even shorter. When we look around us and find nothing to celebrate or smile about, then maybe there is nothing left worth fighting for. It is our moments of joy, as fleeting as they may be at times, that strengthens and sustains us.
Good for you! 
