I’m sitting in my home in Oakland, California, meditating as police helicopters fly overhead. I am not at the protests demanding justice for Mike Brown, even though I live only a few minutes from where they are taking place.

I am sitting because I want badly to be at the protests. I observe the alternating feelings of a bursting heart, a leaden body and a skiddish mind. My legs are restless and my right calf twitches as I imagine jumping on my bike to catch up with a pulsing crowd. I attend to the feeling that I am failing by not dropping everything to respond to the call to #ShutItDown — just shut down this system that does so wrong by so many of us, so that we may finally rebuild it right.

I think of advice an organizer friend relayed getting recently: “Go to sleep. Racism will still be here tomorrow.” But then I rise from my sitting and see an email from Ferguson Actionreading “National Tipping Point” and calling for a massive day of action this Saturday. My stomach drops and my feet both buzz and feel encased in concrete.

I don’t want to join the protests without knowing fully why I’m going. It may be because I am drawn to the feeling of suffering to feel alive. It may be because I want to feel superior to others who passively watch and stay home. Or it may be because this is truly a singular moment in which an unprecedented, strategic and tech-enabled movement is turning the wheel of history. And I want to serve.

I catch my breath, shallow and trapped in a tense belly. I have never been arrested or participated in a non-violent direct action where I actually risked arrest, even though I’ve been an organizer and campaigner of some stripe as long as I can remember.

I register the urge to check Twitter again to see whether the protest is moving towards my neighborhood. I plan my Facebook post asking for someone to come with me to an upcoming protest so I have a buddy, and tick off the mental protest packing list I should prepare: water, Maalox, goggles, handkerchief, gloves and a hat.