It is all about the balance!

Female Activist
Ogra Shinn Fein

We all have many roles to play in our lives, as a student I am meant to be an academic who pushes herself further in order to fulfill her potential.

I am also a friend and family member who has to be there for the people I love both in bad times and the day to day running of things. As a young person I also have the need to socialise and relax with my fellow peers.

I also have a part-time job that I need in order to support myself. This is nothing out of the ordinary and the vast majority of young people fall into this description with some having the demand of a full time job instead of school.

But there is something that makes me different from my closest friends and even my family and that is because I have an additional role that I have chosen to take on and that is to be a political activist. Why, do I or even do you bother to take on this additional role when our time is already so scarce?

Why do we stand in the cold and hand out leaflets instead of lying up watching a DVD? Why attend public meetings instead of going out with our mates to a night club?

Unlike our parents we do not live in a time of conflict and violence, so my friend why do we even bother to take on this role?

I am politically active because the struggle is not yet over and my country is not yet free; because people died so that I could live in a period of peace and have the opportunities that are now available to me; because there are inequalities that I face in my everyday life that I want to try and change. I realise I can’t change the world in a day but I want to try and make out country that bit better for all the people that live in it.

Yes, some days I wonder why I bother standing in the cold and what difference a leaflet really makes. I think that I cannot make the meeting as I have an essay to write or something else to do.

But my friend I remember that as an activist I am not alone and every person counts. If I don’t go and help out my comrades have to work harder. That working together as a team is the only way to push this struggle forward. That it is easy to make excuses and say “I am busy” but the person who is truly busy is the one who doesn’t stop to make an excuse but instead just gets on with it.

So the next time you get a txt or an email about a meeting, leaflet drop and don’t bother to reply, get asked to do something but don’t do it, ask yourself this:

Am I really busy or do I just not care? Even more simply could I just not be bothered?

I know we don’t have an easy task and every-one demands so much of us and our time.
I am not saying abandon any of your other roles, as each is as important as the other, but just for you to use your time correctly as if other people can do it why can’t we all?
You might think oh no, I have more than them to do but that is often not true they just don’t complain as much.

The tone of this article is not meant to be critical but simply a reminder to us all and especially to myself that taking on the role of a political activist is not easy, but others have sacrificed their lives so that we have a smoother path to travel than they did.

Never forget that “Everyone Republican or otherwise has their part to play, no role to big or small” - Bobby Sands

So stop making excuses and start making change!