Someone once said, "Pick a career that you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life." I don't think it's true. You might enjoy many--even most--aspects of your job, but you'll still have deadlines, and time constraints, and personnel issues, and difficult personalities to cope with, and unimaginable stresses. I truly do love my work, but I find myself up to the neck in work-related politics that I despise. They make me want to take up residence in a hollow tree deep in the forest.
The French folklorist, Jean de la Fontaine, said: "Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it." I selected my career, at least in small part, because it looked like a quiet way to live out my years. In the same way, I chose to live in suburban Pittsburgh--in part--to escape the horrors of fracking. Some things cannot be escaped. My job, if done faithfully and well, puts me at the forefront of political battles. And the location of my home requires me to become even more invested in the struggle against fracking. Even the hollow trees and the forests are in danger, and so I feel compelled to remain engaged in the activism and the very politics that I most hate. When a young George Washington ran his imperial errands on this land in the fall of 1753, all was silent. All was still. All was water, and wood, and light. But even then, politics was afoot. The many were vying for their piece of the woodland pie, the Virginians against the Pennsylvanians, the French Empire against the British Empire, the Delaware Tribe against the Iroquois Federation. Even then, this as-yet-unpolluted land was already under the curse of diplomacy and subterfuge.
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