Don’t ya luv voluntary?

It’s 2 a.m. the baby is crying. What do we think? It’s the middle of the night. What stops me striking the baby, to stop it screaming? What stops me imposing a fear-regime from the outset, at the earliest point in the child’s life? Perhaps the coming ‘relationship with the child’.
To the woken parent, who is longing for the baby to stop crying, this feels like adversity, an unwelcome intrusion into the night. Whatever form adversity takes, illness, toothache, grief, etc, we just want it gone, to be NOT THERE.
So, the question is, how do we deal with adversity without having any kill-thoughts and without ‘striking at the source’? How does a non-violent response work better than the other way? How do we act both freely and strongly at the same time?
Maybe it’s often just another hill to climb and NOT actually a problem at all. If we accept adversity, don’t fight it, respect it, learn from it, then it will pass … that is if ‘the bastards’ aren’t behind it.
We fear being enslaved to the ‘adversity-makers’. Whether real of imaginary, these ‘bastards’ live off misery, and hopefully not MY misery. Today we often feel unfree, as though controlled by outside forces, as though Adversity seeks us to strike at us. Maybe it’s inner forces which threaten. The inculcated “fear and retribution for sins committed”, etc. However fear forms we do all hate force imposed. Wherever it comes from, force is uncomfortable and yet it’s part of the human experience. I’m forced to get up in the morning, to get up, get out there and earn a living. Unless I had to go to work would I? I’m forced by circumstance to go to work, to live. Or if I’m ill I’m ‘forced’ to do something about it. But where else are we accepting of force? Nowhere else, I’d suggest. We should assiduously resist all other force. It’s bad for us, for adults especially.
It’s quite a thought isn’t it, that everything (other than paid work and avoiding death) could be taken on board voluntarily. We do things better when we NOT forced. I think of all those animal, environmental and humanist activists having the time of their lives, working like demons but loving it, slaving away for the needs of others. In almost every situation, if we are voluntary, we should create ‘free space’ and appreciate it. All the better for stepping up to adversity and dealing with it, before it enlarges itself. This may look like courage holding hands with gratitude, but it’s a potent approach to adversity. In fact Adversity may be the driving force in life. It creates the tension which is the essence of life-force. And we are inheritors of that force bounded by the vast consciousness humans are blessed with. This is why we should be ever paying back for what we’ve been given. Being “thankful for one’s lot even if, at the time, it don’t seem a lot”. Even if ‘ain’t a lot’.
If we can accept our role here, even though not fully understood at the time, accept it even if it’s a self-allotted role, surely we’re already in a good position to take the knocks on the chin rather than getting demoralised by them. Is this acting preventatively or acting voluntarily? I think it amounts to much the same thing.
Take how we feel about our partner, maybe our ‘marriage’ partner, as an example. We promise to accept them “for better or worse” (there’s a bit of adversity threat here!) That could turn out to be a lifetime love affair, a soul mate situation or the opposite. This might be a time to accept and be grateful to experience union possibly for life. It’s a huge risk to accept, but a huger risk not to. To voluntarily take another person into one’s life and for it to work, isn’t that the sort of contract we reckon we could commit to? The potential for such a union (to produce a child or a free life where things are voluntarily done) - wouldn’t most of us have that if we had the chance?
Or is there a horror here of NOT being free? Compulsion, force, remaining in a union when you could be flying solo?
Is there a deeper instinct, ace trump, which outweighs even the advantage of solo flying? That instinct makes a union stick; able to break through adversity and arrive at … well whatever life has in store for us. That’s partnership. But it’s also what everyone has, a partnership with life. Aren’t we all just a little bit married to Nature? Ideally most people would like to experience a love affair with life, right up till it’s time to ‘leave’. It may be a wild dream for most of us but wouldn’t we all jump at the chance of it? Not just for the warm and fuzzies but because it’s gloriously NOT compulsory, NOT imposed. NO force.
Being voluntary means not needing to be told what to do. It doesn’t mean lazy because that can’t exist when there’s such an easy solution to motivation. Vegans struggle with motivation and keeping up the passion. Wouldn’t most of us get down faced with the implacability of opposition we vegans have to deal with all the time? But if we can be entirely self-motivated, have high enough energy levels to enthusiastically do things just out of ‘loeuve’, we’d personify the volunteer spirit. Yes, I mean “out of love”, that energy which runs the whole caboodle, universe, everything, and it comes directly out of being in love with life.
Voluntary Pursuits. It’s a wonder they don’t run a degree course on it at university. The high art of dodging the bastards whilst acting in keeping with non-violence. This high art would incorporate artfulness (that of The Dodger) with all the energy of passion itself (like that of Mr Fagin). Life could be one long self perpetuating energy (along the lines of ‘the more you put in the more you get out’).
Animal activists deal with vital matters, as volunteers. On love,