Mesothelioma Activists

From Pain To Power: The Apathetic Activist Deals With A World Gone Mad (Pt. 2)
By Russ Reina

When I look back at it now, I’m almost overwhelmed at the thought that so many of my generation, as children, must have faced the same grief as I, and through it, somehow managed to find the will to live. As a child of the sixties I made very adult choices that helped me to find a personal philosophy that would guide me throughout my life. Each of us had to in our own way, and Bravo to us!

My personal path was to follow the directive of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, floppy-eared, freckle-faced cover boy for Mad Magazine who exclaimed, "What, Me Worry?!" I figured if my life could be whooshed away in the blink of any eye, I might as well enjoy it while I had it. Let everything else take care of itself.

Mass movements--which formed so much of the social environment that affected me—had a sheepish mindlessness and lack of personal connection that was confounding. Protest against the status quo -- which had once been a mass movement in itself against the previous order -- involved throwing waves and waves of largely nameless bodies against a foe, weakening it until a final ripple toppled it over. The organizers (who survived) basked in the glory and then built a new machine, just as destructive, but in different ways. Saving the world seemed such a strange enterprise.

Yet, I could not stand idly by. I chose to enter the human drama of people in need, right then, right there. There was something in me that called out to make my work personal. At first I worked in a nursing home, and then entered emergency medicine, which in the 1970s was in its infancy. Still, almost inadvertently, I found myself getting sucked in to a cause greater than myself.