We never know how the impact of our actions may ripple out. We never know who may be touched. That's one more reason why, although the fruits of our labors can't always be seen, they matter immensely. …
Nowhere is the need for a long view of social change more evident than in the case of campaigns that span generations. Think of the women's suffrage movement. When Susan B. Anthony began fighting for women's right to vote, her cause seemed a long shot. She worked for it her entire adult life, then died at the age of eighty-six, fourteen years before suffrage was ratified.
In retrospect, Anthony played as pivotal a role as any single individual. Yet during her lifetime, success seemed far from assured. Only by trusting that sooner or later their actions would matter could she and others keep on until they prevailed. …
Fighting for our deepest convictions requires relinquishing control and accepting messy uncertainties. It demands working as well as we can at efforts that feel morally right, and then having faith that our labors will bear fruit, perhaps in our time, or perhaps down the line, for somebody else.
"If you expect to see the final results of your work," wrote the journalist I. F. Stone, "you simply have not asked a big enough question." …
America's dominant culture insists that our lives have no such broader significance, so we dare not vest them with purpose. Yet we can see how political silence feeds on itself, breeding isolation and despair. And how acts of faith and courage, conversely, can build on one another, opening up new possibilities. We owe much to those who acted with vision and conviction in previous times.
The risks and commitments we undertake today may leave a better world for those yet to come. We can view our lives as a bridge between past and future.
From Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time, by Paul Rogat Loeb ($15.95). Available from St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010; (800) 288-2131.
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