I want to make as big a difference as possible. I want to make as much change as possible, in minds, hearts, communities, the world. Big as I can reach, far as I can go.
I’ve always wanted that.
I was in my thirties before I realized that is not everyone’s goal.
The realization stunned me and hobbled me briefly. I had to pause and reset my ideas of the world.
I want to make as much change as possible. And I’ve always believed that one-on-one change is one of the most powerful things anyone can do. But how can I or anyone possibly make as much change as possible one person at a time? With all the problems in the world, how can changing one person’s mind and heart possibly matter?
But it does.
And it goes both ways.
My mind can be changed too.
One day in college, I was walking down the street I lived on, headed for class. For reasons I can’t remember, as a man and I walked past each other, we struck up a conversation because of one question.
“Do you live on this street?”
I said I did and told him I lived in the big white house a couple blocks behind me.
“Sixty-Nine?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Carl’s old house.”
“Who’s Carl?”
“Carl was my lawyer.”
“Why did you have a lawyer?”
“Because back in ’78, a black man killed my father.”
“Wow. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you know these niggers, they are trouble. Make the world unsafe. Not safe with them around. Get rid of them and the world would be better. Not safe at all. They’re moving into this neighborhood and everything. Causing lots of problems.”
“Do you really think their problem is the color of their skin?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t agree with you.”
I didn’t know what to say after that, and the conversation soon ended. I knew that even if I skipped class that day or for the rest of the semester, I didn’t have the tools to change this person’s mind.
But I realized he had opened mine.
I understood how a person could feel who had lost a parent suddenly. I lost my mom suddenly when I was a child. When loss like that happens, we want to place blame, and when someone is killed by someone else, blame is easy to place.
The problem is leaving it there, making a person a repository for our rage, rather than climbing into the hole that’s been left behind and moving in long enough to begin screaming in pain. The problem is that feeling that kind of pain is unbearable – way harder than hating someone, or a whole group of people.
I remembered that I have hated too.
I saw the route from his loss to his hatred and how he could get stuck there.
I knew I was still stuck in places that my mom’s death had cracked open.
I never saw that man again.
And I never forgot him.
Or his pain.
The world is full of his kind of pain.
And many other things.
I want to make as much change as possible.
I know that pain can change.
I still think one-on-one change is a winning ticket.
And the first one I have to change is me.
I’ve got to be willing to think and see differently, to jump outside my own box and begin tearing it down. I’ve got to rebuild the house of my beliefs regularly. I’ve got to get out the microscope and turn it on myself first.
Talking to a man whose name I never knew for a few short minutes, changed me. That spring day on a sidewalk in Connecticut left me wanting tools for future conversations. Not long after that, I trained and worked for a while as an anti-bias facilitator. I have used the tools I learned in other conversations and situations. I have also been a trauma professional for more than 20 years. I make part of my living helping people turn their rage into grief, and their grief into strength, and their strength into possibility. I have the immense privilege of doing work that changes lives.
When my clients are stuck, I remind them to get up and move. Make a change right now. Move your left arm, or right foot. Just move.
You can change something when you get home too, I remind them, even if it’s the sheets on the bed, or the water filter in the fridge.
Life is dynamic and moving always.
Static is not real.
I like my life. I don’t want a lot of things in it to change. I’m not looking for the biggest possible change inside my house or family.
But guess what, only so much of what change happens and where change happens is up to me.
You can hang on, but like someone long before me said, change is the only constant.
Too many damn people in Texas and Louisiana and South Asia know that right now. They have taken a crash water course in change they didn’t sign up for. They know about sudden change in ways I can’t even imagine.
Tragic change is too much. Sudden change is too much.
Sustainable change happens slowly, in a way that empowers us to be or do things differently.
Ideally, we are on board, and change transforms our worlds in ways we want.
But life is not always ideal or positive.
It is, however, always changing in big and small ways.
You don’t need to know how your words or actions can change your life or another person’s life.
You only need to remember that they can.
And do what you can to make a difference.
May we all find strength in these changing, unstable times. May we be able to meet the changes we encounter, climb into the spaces they leave in their wake, and support each other to inhabit our lives in new ways.
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Also published on Medium.
