As I reflect back on Los Angelese i wonder what keeps people going to fight the good fight everyday. While in LA we met with amazing people who are the unsung heroes, the champions of the poor and unwanted. The people who work on behalf the rest of us have forgotten, who fight everyday to give a voice, not to themselves, but to their brother, their sister in need. Yes there’s a personal agenda, yes, there are people who do it stroke their own egos as selfless martyrs but then again, there are energy company executives who spend their entire lives accumulating wealth,to spend their vacations on boats that kill manatees.
What i wonder about as i go to school everyday, while i spend my time studying and writing and thinking lofty thoughts, what will this all come to? What will become of me, will i choose the easy path, will i choose the life of the people i saw who spend their time “singing for their supper”? I know when it is the right time to make a decision other things will affect me, like my family, my friends, the pay grade, but how many of the people who i saw have always envisioned themselves in that role?
there is this double pull, the idea that nothing that we do is neutral, there is no middle ground. Everything we do, or choose not to do has an effect on something somewhere. How do we fight against th
e tide that pulls us unconsciously in one direction or another? How do we become the best versions of ourselves?
I ask myself this question a lot. LA has shown me two sides, the side that is fighting for what’s right, and the faceless “other” the side that supports the business interests and not the people’s. The side that shoots a mentally ill man in the street because earlier that system tore down the structures that would have housed him. I don’t want to be on that side. But that side too needs good people who want to speak up for the downtrodden. The question becomes how do you fight the tide. How do you exist in that system that wants to swallow up and make you just like them.
I hope that i find my “sacred purpose” the reason why I am here, the best version of myself, for i am fearful of being swallowed up by the tide, forgetting the bigger picture, forgetting myself.
