Today I woke up and quickly but begrudgingly remembered that there was an Occupy Seattle rally happening downtown. From where we live, way out in the rural burbs (one would be hard pressed to call this the burbs truth be told… houses are separated by blocks if not miles and the nearest store is a few miles away…) I was well aware that trekking to downtown Seattle for an early morning march would take about an hour. Besides all the prep work and getting showered and dressed. Seemed like a lot of work and honestly I just wanted to sleep in. But the thought haunted me…. Was it really okay if we just skipped this rally? More apt, would WE be okay if we just skipped it? How would we feel afterwards? It didn’t feel good.
So I rolled over in bed and looked at Princess Little Tree and said, “listen, you know we have this Occupy Rally this morning. It’s gonna take an hour just to get there….”
“Do you want to skip it?” she asked.
Knowing she was usually up for almost anything, I replied, “I have a better idea. Why don’t we just slam down some coffee, throw on our bathrobes and just go. No showers,”
“What?! Are you crazy boy? We’re going to go in our pajamas? In public?”
“Well yeah. It’s better than making a big thing out of it and getting dressed and stuff. That’ll take forever. Aren’t you tired? I freaking am. Let’s just get there. We can make our signs in the car. We’ll tie our signs into how we’re dressed somehow and make a thing out of it and at the very least we’ll be there. We won’t lame out.”
Lucky for both of us she agreed. We just threw our bathrobes over our pajamas and got in the car and headed downtown. And in the end, it worked out probably better than if we had done it in a more normal way. There was more of a performance art vibe to it. Though the real reason for our “performance art” was just being tired and lazy. But it felt good. Because we didn’t lame out. There’s something important to take away from this experience. No matter how you feel, no matter how early it is or how tired you are or how far something is from you, if you believe in the cause, you gotta just go for it. Period. That’s what makes the difference.
