Hamster Wheel
I had two hamsters growing up- Free and Easy. There was nothing particularly easy about them, and they were anything but free. I remember my dad drilling a hole into the kitchen cabinet trying to capture one (Easy) that had escaped. They weren’t even free or easy in the traditional sense of the term- they were nervous little creatures, turning their squeaky little wheel in a frantic pursuit to nowhere. I like to hope they at least felt purposeful in their frantic little hamster minds.
We often think of races as linear journeys- even the ones that wrap around a track. The beginning, the journey, the destination.
We’re realizing that our mission isn’t where or even what we thought it was. One million diapers don’t form the track. Their distribution isn’t what marks the finish line.
They’re the starting block.
One million diapers won’t end diaper need. Our project scope is substantial, yes- and costly. But the price tag of the project shouldn’t define where the value is held. Americans, in their capitalist and materialist hunger, frequently (if not always) get this part wrong.
The value of this project lies in the piece you can’t find as a line item in our budget. It’s invisible- change comes from showing up, speaking truth to power, and insisting on a new conversation every day. Daring to insist that diapers should be available in public bathrooms. Calling into question the very system of diaper banks, pressing the question of why our civic structures and leaders even allow it to come to needing diaper banks in the first place. Demanding that the whole way we understand child care, infant health and caregiver support structures be turned on its head.
The diapers are just the platform for this work. The backdrop. The thing we’re digging our heels into in order to propel us forward with a new, third kind of energy- one that’s both potential and kinetic.
If we say we are working to end diaper need but are only succeeding in giving away diapers, we cannot claim to be working to end diaper need. It’s the ultimate hamster wheel. We must change the conversation.
Ending diaper need looks like calling and writing and holding structures accountable. It looks like holding communities accountable. It’s making the problem visible and decrying the extent of the problem on behalf of those trying to get by who shouldn’t be. It’s shining a light on what should and should not be so.
The hope- the thing we realize we want to build- once we get going and tune in to the spongy ground beneath us as we hit our stride, is that there is no finish line in sight. To fail will be to have given away a million diapers. To win will have been new connections built and for no one to need us to exist anymore-
for us to become as unnecessary as a toilet paper bank.
