When we’re young, it’s likely that we pictured our life moving in a straight line. Maybe we imagined hitting the socially constructed benchmarks that someone, somewhere, at some point, set up for us and who said THIS, this is how it’s done. It’s probably even more likely that many of us, maybe even most of us, thought, no scratch that, KNEW, that it was a load of horse shit. Still, some of us trudged on, hitting mark after mark, while others took out our chunky, pink erasers and made that straight line disappear, replacing it with curves and corners, back-tracks and bends. And perhaps, there are even those who sought the warm comfort of knowing what was expected, and reveled in knowing exactly where they were on that line.

And there are still others who aren’t even able to see the line because there is road block after road block of socially constructed, systemically imbedded obstacles in their way. They spend their whole life working twice as hard to not only remove the road blocks for themselves and those who will come after them, but also waving their arms and shouting to the rest of us to notice that these road blocks exist, hoping that at least a few of us have sledgehammers or sticks of dynamite to blast those blocks to smithereens.

And they do all of that removing, shouting, confronting and challenging while simultaneously creating, innovating, learning, growing, discovering, teaching, reaching, loving, and living; drawing their own lines.

They will spend years, decades even, blowing those obstacles to bits, just to see others use the debris to build up new, stronger barriers, who then try to convince us that these new barriers don’t even exist.

This isn’t to say that all of us don’t have boulders blocking our way, it’s just that many of us were born with the sticks of dynamite in our back pocket, while others were given only a hammer or nothing at all.

So to all of us with those sticks of dynamite in our pockets, and even those with hammers, here is what we need to do:

Recognize that we have the dynamite

Acknowledge that we only have the dynamite by chance, that we did nothing to deserve it, and we are unjustly rewarded for having it.

See the road blocks that others are facing.

Identify those judgments we have of those who are empty handed.

Listen to those who face those road blocks empty handed…remembering ”those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” (Slogan used by JustLeadershipUSA)

Combine all the dynamite, use all the hammers, collect all the ammunition we have and obliterate those obstacles for good.

And fucking VOTE.

Light the Match

Beyond Beige

Death, too