Anarchist to Abolitionist: A Bad Quaker's Journey
Doing What No One Else Wants To Do
Since we've broken away from the timeline of the narrative, this would be a good time for me to talk about a strength I possess that has also been a curse.
The vast majority of work my dad's construction company did was new installation of underground utilities. However, on occasion, we would have to connect an old sewer line to a sewer main, or replace an old septic system completely, meaning we still had to connect an old sewer line to a new line. In either operation you had to deal with cutting an old sewer pipe and usually digging up and removing an old section of the line. The old pipes were seldom empty. Usually this process resulted in the guy who had to make the cut and the connection, standing in raw sewage, and handling the old sewage covered line until the connection was secure.
Nobody wants to stand in sewage or handle old sewage lines, so I would do it. If it had to be done, I would just dig down in my soul and bring up the grit to do the job, no matter how distasteful. Very quickly, people started to notice this about me and that meant when there was any distasteful job, I would be the person people thought of to do the task.
A more modern crew. Wikipedia
At first this was mostly confined to my construction job, but as I got older and was exposed to different jobs and different situations, the relatively little amount of grit it takes to stick your hands in sewage grew, as I faced harder and harder challenges. For example, one cold morning I was standing next to the road in front of our house, waiting for the school bus, when I heard a terrible sound from across the street. Our neighbor was an older gentleman who had a cat he dearly loved. It had crawled up under the hood of his car and was sleeping on the engine when he started his car. The cat was pulled into the fan belt and was chopped up pretty bad. There were no animal hospitals in that part of Appalachia back then, so it would have been hours before the cat could even see a veterinarian. Even then, the vet would only be putting the cat down because she had been chopped up so bad.
The poor man was beside himself, he loved that cat so much. He looked at me and said that she had to be put down as quickly as possible, but said there was no way he could do it. I told him I would take care of her as quickly as I could. Then, I gently lifted her out of the car and took her to our barn, where I dispatched her. This was extremely painful for me. This happened not long after Shorty's death, and it made me realize for the first time that Shorty very likely didn't die on the spot when the truck ran over him. In all likelihood, Dad had to put him down. I assume this about Shorty, but I never asked my dad. I knew from this experience with the neighbor’s cat that it was something we just don't talk about.
Killing that poor old cat was far more difficult for me than climbing into sewage and handling a pipe, but it had to be done, so I did it. Later in my life, a dog had to be put down and no one there could do it. So, again, I did it. I can't emphasize enough how painful it is for me to have to kill a pet. But when it has to be done, every second of delay makes it worse. You have to reach down deep in yourself and draw that grit up from your depths and deal with the situation without the burden of emotions.
There are two negative aspects to having such grit. The first is that people learn that you are the guy that can do the thing no one else has the fortitude to handle. Therefore, they dump their nasty jobs on you. I carry the burden of killing eight dogs and three cats. I never wanted to kill any, but someone had to do it. In each case, the act had to be done by someone, and I was that someone who could turn off my emotions and take action.
The second negative aspect is that, at some time, all of the emotions and memories return into your mind, but the grit has retreated back into your depths; you're defenseless against your emotions. You feel every drop of that pain, over and over, each time you're reminded of the event. Sometimes even years later.
I think I should return us to the timeline of the narrative now and set aside the philosophy for a while, otherwise memories will come flooding into my brain and there's no telling where they will lead me.
First post & table of contents
If you would like to read the book in its entirety, you can purchase it with cryptocurrency at Liberty Under Attack Publications or find it on Amazon. We also invite you to visit BadQuaker.com, and, as always, thank you for reading.
I've had to put down a few animals that were in pain. They were going to die anyway and I couldn't bear to let them continue in their agony for however long it would take them to die. None were pets, but every one of them still bothered me. I know it was the right thing to do, but I can't shake that feeling. Like you said, when I think about them, it's like it happened just a few moments ago, raw and intense sorrow. Some I didn't feel the feelings at the time, but I feel all of them now.
A conscience is a blessing if you take the rewards of it and add it to the wealth you gain by living. I am grateful more for regret, shame, and fear than shiny tokens, accolades, or reputation, because those wonders avail me of sound understanding that informs my actions when contemplating my course in life.
The latter are but gossip and ease, which avail me no strength to face the oncoming storm at all.
Thanks!
I was raised feral, on an island in Alaska. As a child it was a matter of course to kill to eat, and children aren't competent to wax philosophical on the souls they dispatch, for the most part. At some point, they become competent to do so, and begin a process of self-examination.
I later raised my sons in the woods, teaching them to hunt and fish as I had been, because that process of self-examination is necessary to men, and the cure for snowflakitis. People who have not undertaken it are like the old man with the dying cat, personally incompetent to do what is best for those they love; to end cruel suffering and give the gift of peace.
After I came of age and continued hunting, I discovered that the self-examination never ends. You can keep wrassling demons until they are vanquished, and unless you have been perfect, some demons cannot be killed. No one is perfect.
I learned that when I allowed myself to fully reckon at the time the import of my acts as a hunter, though I wept by the side of the deer and elk I loved so, the tears would wash the blood from my hands in my spirit as well as my flesh. Those stealth regrets, if not allowed their complete expression at the time of their cause, can pile up. As you note, when you practice repression of them in the moment, you can also later depend on suppression of those realizations to maintain the fiction you write of yourself in your mind, and the pressure builds. It keeps building if it isn't released. Some folks have psychotic breaks, or become sado-masochists, or crack addicts, to allow the pressure to bleed off, but doing so never gains the treasure of proper self-examination: peace and understanding of one's place in the world, proper valuation of life and freedom, and intimate knowledge of the self that is a foundation on which very solid men are built.
I cannot count the things that have died at my hands in the course of my life. No one can, because we do not even know of the bugs we step on when we walk, or the microbes we inhale when we breathe, and everyone that eats food prepared by others, or bought at stores, has never known the creatures they have killed to eat. Those are terrible deficits in our self-knowledge, our brotherhood with life, and a tax on the real treasure we accrue by living.
When hunters mount trophies on their walls, it is highly rewarding that they are reminded of their brotherhood with their game, and their true wealth of spirit made more substantial by their being reminded of their own fragile flesh in the act of revering their prey. Overall, I find hunters far less prone to predatory sociopathy that so sadly infests city folk.
Perhaps you would benefit from mounting a grimy pipe collar, or fan belt, on your wall, to free you from the desperate suppression of the facts of your existence. I would bid you peace.
Thanks!
Edit: I note upon rereading this comment that it strikes an unintended tone of moral superiority I do not feel, nor seek to afflict you with. I have PTSD, and am incapable of wrassling demons immortal and inviolate more so than anyone I know. The recovery process in PTSD is acceptance of these demons, and growth of humility that, for obvious reasons, I dare not be proud of achieving.
Benjamin Franklin was a father, and wrote his son a letter once that discussed his desire to attain to seven noble virtues. He confessed in the letter that he had given up on humility completely, because he had realized that should he ever attain it, he would be proud of it. I have learned what I know by living it, and am not as proud of my edumacation as my tone implies.
Writing words is but a faint shadow of meaning, and I hope you are able to grasp useful blessings from the reality of the shadow I write so poorly.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here