Watching the news can be hard sometimes. As much as it informs us, it always seems that there is so much bad stuff going on in the world. Seriously. Someone’s getting popped, someone was driving and drinking. It seems that the messages the news sends us are endless but the lessons learned are little.
It’s hard to live in certain communities. Being the only black girl in the room, workplace, or on the block is even tougher. For some reason you become the spokesperson for the entire race, and people are closely watching you to see what your next move or action will be. If you are surrounded by your people, comfort settles in. But then there is more of a challenge to uplift in areas where things are wrong otherwise you are blamed or grouped amongst the pack when things go down that just aren’t right.
It can be tough. And although our world has come a long way from segregated classrooms and strangefruit, the history of an embittered and horrendous past still follows our people, whispering its awful memories in our ears so that we don’t forget. We don’t need to forget. But we need to move forward to bring about peace in our communities. We need to move forward to find happiness on our soul. We need to move forward to breathe.
How do we alter such a dreadful state? How do we change the headlines that we see on the news?
We must seek as, Mahatma Ghandi said, to “be the change you want to see in the world.”
Be the change.
It feels that often times we are often sitting and waiting for change to happen. We know a change is gonna’ come, a change is gonna’ come. But we can’t truly reach the change unless we put some action behind it. When we begin to move our feet forward from stages of idleness or stagnancy, we will begin to see the colors of the world blend and move, hopefully forming a more clear picture, one in which we are recognized for more than the bad news that replay on the tv set.
If we want to see it, we have to feel it. If we want to see it, we got to be it. If we want to see it, we got to do something about it.
We have to be the change that we want to see in the world.
Period.
