Hello!
This is pretty much just my new project. After the blog I kept this summer while living with the homeless in Denver (you can check that out here) I’ve moved on (kind of) and I figure it’s finally time for something new.
The idea here really came to me when I was living out on the streets. I realized most people we’re treating me, my peers and each other in a way that wasn’t so great.
People treating people badly. This is not the intention of anyone. Not when we wake up in the morning. Not when we’re on our way or at work. Not when we get home to our friends and family. No one wakes up in the morning and says “I really feel like going out and treating a homeless person poorly today”. No one walks out onto the streets for the sake of judging people by how they look. No one gets a job just wanting to be greedy and make money their world. No one gets married just planning to get divorced or becomes a parent with the intent to hurt their child.
It’s never what we intend to do.
Yet we see that happening every day.
We desire to be good.
Why in everyday interactions do we often treat people badly?
That is not where our value is. It’s not who you are and that is not who I am. It’s not what we strive for.
But then why does it continue? Why are our intentions so far from the reality of our life everyday? Why are our ideals not lived out?
I think those are the questions we have to start to ask. We have challenge ourselves. We have to be bold enough to wonder and test and define our lives by our actions rather than our thoughts.
What I’ve found is that the reason for most of these situations is that we just live without much preparation. We don’t challenge our weaknesses and we don’t look at our potential to do things right. Sure we’ll throw a quote up on twitter or facebook or slap a bumper sticker on our car or write a post it note on our desk but when it comes to actually doing something we leave that up to the non-profits, churches, teachers, mentors and people who are often labeled as radical. All those things are great. They are needed. But they aren’t enough.
In order for real change to happen everyone needs to get involved. Life as we know it doesn’t need to change radically (it could) but there is a lot that could be done in our every day life that, cumulatively, could have a much greater change than any group or organization could have by itself.
I also understand that people often don’t act because they don’t know where to start. How to interact, love and join in.
People also don’t act because it’s kind of scary. We could fail. And failing isn’t fun.
But if we avoid failing we don’t discover what we could be doing. My life that last couple years has been about that. What I COULD do. Along my journey I’ve seen how easy it could have been to give up. Anybody can give up. That’s easy.
It’s when we don’t give up where the world changes.
And this world changing stuff. It’s not just in certain people. It’s not just in people who write books or people we admire in history or those we look up to but write ourselves off as never being able to become.
The people we see and look up to and who make history, I believe, are the ones that didn’t give up. They are the ones that used adversity as motivation rather than devastation. I think somewhere along the way those people realized their potential and strived after it in an intentional matter. What is in those people? I believe it’s in everyone. It’s part of the potential that comes with being a human.
All we have to do is realize that we have it.
If we want to be a part of the change, we have to be intentional, understand each other, live for others and make a claim.
I am part.
I AM PART 