The Emergence of Hope

For months now, I have said nearly every day that I should start blogging again. I have gotten up every morning, reflected on my coming day, and thought "Maybe today I'll get a chance to sit down and write something." Some days (many days) I have chuckled (audibly) at the ridiculous notion that even three entire minutes would coincide to be empty at the same time for a moment to write. Other days, the moment seems possible - even guaranteed - but somehow it slips through my fingers.

I quit writing because I felt like I had nothing to say that anyone would want to hear. I spent at least sixty hours in December walking and walking and walking; through the Christmas lights and along the railroad tracks, Riker and I walked the miles, watching the icy breath hang in front of our faces. Thinking. I was (and am) uncertain about my career goals and dreams (both immediate and long-term) so I spent a lot of time asking myself what I am passionate about.

Sometimes, on my walks, I listened only to the vast silence of a winter's night, but sometimes - in an effort to understand my passions - I listened on my iPod to lectures by Muhammad Yunus and others on ending world poverty and social entrepreneurship. (Yes, a dork, I know.) I have no answers for myself (I continue to fly by the seat of my pants.) but somehow, through my walks and the lectures and my reading, I find myself moving in a certain direction with a certain drive (though without a known goal).

What's the direction? Well, Wednesday night, I wrote the previous three paragraphs on a legal pad while sitting in on a panel on social entrepreneurship at an event called "Act Local, Think Global." I think UT may have hosted this event for a couple of years, but I - who am hard-pressed to go to any kind of event anytime - never felt any desire to go. And I was astounded at how many people were there!

The Texas Union Ballroom was completely packed with representatives from dozens of social action groups from Teach For America and the ONE Campaign down to Ten Thousand Villages and Eastside Community Connection. I'm now on a dozen mailing lists because I feel like I am entering a place in my life when it will be important to know what action is happening around the city.

The weird thing for me is that it seems like a lot of people I know are hitting this place; a lot of people I know are feeling this urge to stand up and say "This, I will not tolerate."

I went biking yesterday on the Greenbelt and it was the first time I've gone biking since before I posted last (which is probably not a coincidence) and I went partially because it was a beautiful day, but largely because it seemed like the RIGHT day. I had just finished reading Dervla Murphy's Full Tilt, about biking from Ireland to India and was feeling an extra-strong urge to knock off some miles, but for a while yesterday afternoon I sat on my couch almost paralyzed with indecision. I had homework that I really needed to be doing, and I was thinking about biking, but in that moment, what I really wanted to do more than anything else was take a nap. Earlier in the day, the desire to ride had been almost worth skipping class, but in that moment, I just wanted to sleep. I was sitting on my bed, pulling off my shoes for a nap, when something in me snapped, and I said, "To hell with this, I NEED to ride my bike today," and did it, and the trail really kicked my butt (quite literally) but it was as awesome as I knew it would be.

The amazing thing to me is how many other bikers were on the trail! I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never seen as many bikers on the Barton Creek Greenbelt as I saw yesterday. It seemed like every minute I was having to pull aside to give oncoming traffic the trail. (Why I always had to pull over is still beyond me.) At one point, I stopped to talk to a hiker who complained about the amount of bike traffic on the trail, and she agreed that she had never seen that many bikes either. Together, we tried to figure out what the deal was? "Were we all together?" No... "Is it the weather?" I've seen more pleasant days with few people. "Maybe people are getting in a ride before the cold front comes through tomorrow?" I said, What cold front? "Maybe it has something to do with Valentine's Day?" Maybe, though the thought never occurred to me.

The truth is that hundreds of individual bicyclists individually decided that yesterday was the RIGHT day to hit the trail, for their own reasons, and somehow, everyone chose the same day.

This kind of spontaneous random emergence is what I think of when I think of my own desire to act toward social justice in the world. It seems to me like the RIGHT time to act, just like yesterday was the RIGHT day for a ride, and somehow, many people I know and - I believe - many people around the country and around the world are also somehow deciding that now is the right time to act. It is not a generational thing or a class thing or a regional thing. This new hope thing is so much bigger than that, and - though I hesitate to presume - I think this is a God thing.

And so with this burning in my gut that isn't bad seafood and that needs somewhere to go, I am back to writing.

Also (though probably not unrelated), my dad has started blogging again the competitive side of me (the side that motivates so much of what I do) demands not to be left behind.

RE: "Is Sexism Less Offensive Than Racism in Politics?"

[THIS IS A COMMENT THAT I POSTED IN RESPONSE TO A CNN.COM ARTICLE ASKING WHETHER RACISM OR SEXISM IS WORSE IN THIS ELECTION. I LIKED IT ENOUGH TO SHARE.]

I agree that sexism and racism are both equally bad factors to use in deciding how to cast your ballot. It seems that the Democratic Party is in a place of wanting to right old injustices and start fresh by saying, "See? We are no longer white males only; in fact, we are willing to entrust our highest office to this once-oppressed group. Let's put that old day behind us." I think this is an incredibly powerful desire on the part of the American people. Electing a woman tells the world that we are willing to let a woman rule our country the same as electing a black man tells the world the same message.

However, without in any way discrediting the past and current injustices committed against women, no injustice has so torn our nation apart and threatened to destroy this country as the injustice committed against African-Americans, through slavery, during Reconstruction, and for the decades after. Nothing divides our nation now and disempowers the American people now as much as racism - both ongoing and its repercussions from two hundred years of blatant and destructive discrimination.

While that is the kind of statement that matters most as a declaration by the American people to itself, as a sign of unity behind an ideal, it is also worth thinking about how the rest of the world will view this election, and from that perspective, imagine what statement we give in a President Barack Hussein Obama. Our enemies gain credibility by describing America as a vanilla-white society who suppresses people different than ourselves whose goal is to homogenize the world under the banner of McDonald's. Obama is an American through-and-through and - though Christian - has a Muslim-sounding name. By electing a black man whose life story rings true with people from the very parts of the world who feel the most alienated by Americans we are not only healing the wounds of our own domestic injustices, we are showing the world what American democracy really truly is all about, and we are proving Osama bin Laden wrong and showing that we are more than our mistakes.

As a country, we are being put in an intimidating position of responsibility: choosing which wrong we want to right first. The injustices against women need addressing (as the blatantly sexist remarks this election season have proven) and I believe that a day is coming soon when these injustices will be addressed, but the defeat of the racism prevalent in this campaign is as significant a moment for democracy as Americans are ever likely to see.