You don’t know the power of the Dark Side.
Burnout is nearly universal amongst organizers, usually within three to four years, and that’s because they’re driven by things like love, loyalty, friendship, kindness, and outrage at injustice. These things are strong, but they don’t last. They get ground down by the constant need to feed positive energy to others while swallowing all of the despair, anxiety, and sadness which comes from having to be brutally aware of what’s really going on. What I teach organizers is that rage and hatred will burn on and on and on, long into the dark, cold, lonely night when hope and love are long since ashes.
What gets me through life and has kept me fighting for decades is the strength of the cool, reptilian-brain emotions. They’re more pure, more relentless than the more evolved and sensitive primate emotions. Those who want to fight with monsters must become something of a monster themselves. The challenge is in finding ways to keep yourself from being completely devoured by the darkness and becoming the very thing you’ve spent your entire life fighting.