Not everyone is suited for conviction
Maybe that includes me.
It seems that I live a very easy life. Have I ever had to stand up for my convictions? What does it even mean to someone who hasn’t experienced it before? Yes, we have our beliefs, our opinions, but they are all decoration, part of the costume of living. But the clothes I wear don’t determine my life or death. Convictions do, because they are a force of belief that splits and separates people and creates conflict that a person like myself can hardly imagine.
I’ve been told to follow my passions and my enjoyments, because I will find satisfaction in them. That’s easy satisfaction, because no one stands in the way of most passions and most enjoyments—that’s the modern freedom of Western society. In other words, no one cares about the costume you’re wearing. It doesn’t bother them. It might lightly annoy them, living a garish and ostentatious lifestyle. But it’s a “what are you gonna do about it” kind of opposition.
But conviction, that’s a way of being that stands as a wall against the flow of society. If one had the conviction and resoluteness to stand against destructive forces of the world, you’d be in jail by tomorrow. And so few people are in jail due to their convictions.
Maybe Zoe Rosenberg, who is starting a several month jail sentence for protecting 4 chickens is an example of true conviction. She’s been arrested several times for different animal rights activist activities since she was a teenager, and saving 4 chickens is the one that stuck. These are beliefs that turn into action that in turn encourage real punishment by people who cannot stand for such acts of belief—otherwise known as a conviction.
The most popular human rights activists in the world, from Gandhi to Mandela to King Jr had deep convictions. Perhaps a belief transforms into conviction when it has to face serious consequences.
What beliefs do I have that demand consequences? None. I stand for nothing that gives rise to punishment. And should I? Well, no. But if you take inventory of what people stand up and against nowadays, it kinda seems like so. Environmental abuse, animal abuse, human abuse. Three categories with many subthemes that are very open for those with convictions.
What is the gap between those that have convictions and those that don’t? Maybe it’s responsibilities—”I would save the animals, but I do have a dentist appointment tomorrow.” / “My kids have been up all night, so I gotta calm them down before I try to stop that mining operation from mowing over my hometown.”
It’s shrill, it’s uncomfortable. But those who have integrated action into their belief systems are shrill and uncomfortable, because it implies the decades-old saying: “If not you, who? If not now, when?“
These two questions are usually responded to by subjunctives: “I would do it... I should do it... I could do it.” People envision themselves being these hometown heroes as a nice thought, and are usually satiated by the mental association with the act before ever turning their fleeting beliefs into convictions.
The easiest thing we’ve done for ourselves is to simulate conviction through consumption: This jacket came from a sustainable sweatshop in Vietnam. These cows were at least hanging out in pasture near the highway before arriving at the chopping block. So we apply simulations of conviction to what we buy and what we eat, hoping that maybe voting with the wallet is enough for change in the world, but more realistically just to cope with our inactivity.
And not everyone is suited for conviction, including myself likely enough. We come from different environments, different bodies, different mental states that start us down paths that maintain, reject, or transcend what exists today in the world. A lot of us maintain, and perhaps make those small decisions that can open up the next generation to transcendence, so they don’t have to make the same mistakes that we made. A lot of us are just surviving, whether surviving our given environments or even our given bodies.
But maybe what can be done is encouragement. To find those who reject the status quo and encourage them. You don’t even have to agree with them; they’re already stacked up against the world, so don’t worry, your encouragement will only allow them to know that they’re on the right track. Because there’s always something to improve, to change, to drop, to take on, and those who challenge the status quo, whether they fail or succeed, are those who provide life to the rest of us.
When I passed by a No Kings rally back in June 2025 or so in a small town in California, I walked past protestors on one side of the street, and across the street were the counter-protestors, who brought lifted trucks and American flags to give a fun texture to their position.
What I saw was life, elevated. You could feel energies of people who had beliefs strong enough to participate in this division. And I imagine a sad alternate universe in which this didn’t happen, where each of these groups had nothing to believe in, sitting in their house and watching TV or checking in on their phones.
I appreciate the diversity of life on this planet, who are willing to go in light conflict with each other to present something different. Now, I can’t guarantee that all the people on each side of that street truly believed in what they were doing—there are some people who just find crowds and start yelling in them—but overall I can be assured that people were moving and using their energy for life itself.
It was an unfiltered snapshot of life, in comparison to the filtered versions of Elevated Life on the television news, where people, images, and sounds are positioned just right to pretend as if great things are always happening. Filtered life is just noise, and it’s a distraction from true conviction. So many actors simulate conviction everyday on those channels, but they just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
They don’t do, but talk, and there you can easily identify the coulda/woulda/shoulda-people from the doers who are walking the streets, in jail, or dying from enforcements and punishments.
And here I am... writing, writing, writing, writing, because I have beliefs to express, but no actions to follow through on. I provide my frail excuse: I am confident in my skill of writing, and not of my ability to handle unfiltered life. I have been trained to fight wildfires, not other people. Recognize that we all have our struggles, big and small, so and one has to give grace to all the others, who I encourage to just encourage.
And I encourage those to be at truth with themselves: If you are just mentally inserting yourself into others’ heroic acts, just know you are not it. You are something else, deeply and uniquely your own. If you find your own role in this life, then you won’t have to create the coulda/woulda/shoulda excuses for why it isn’t you, and it’s not now.
Trust that you have something to do for others in this life, and it can and will be something you don’t see in the news. Because not all acts of heroism and justice and good are news-worthy, but creates a whole new world for those who are your recipient.
To those who I am writing to, I hope I reached you. You have something to do.
Best,
Dom