If I won’t have the courage to point my finger inward how will I ever evolve to truly leave a better world for my son.

Being a victim of violence

and

Behaving as if you are a victim of violence

are as different as fire and water.

If I won’t have the courage to first proclaim myself the worst of what I see in others, how can you ever trust what I say?

If I am the one who so vehemently, loudly and proudly point out the faults, be them terrible and huge or subtle and sweet, in others before I have pointed out every last one of my own, then I am not to be trusted. I am making the world a sicker place every time I point my finger at you.

That is not what I want.

If I am one of those who have decided that now is the time to speak, or act, now is the time, then good for me. It’s about time. But if I don’t carry with me all the times before I chose not to speak or act, all the violence I let go by without saying a word or lifting a finger and if I don’t carry this with me as wisdom that leads to compassion then I might as well stay silent, sit at home because I will be making the world sicker.

That is not what I want.

To move forward without understanding from where I’ve come is a dangerous and careless proposition. I know from experience and there is no chance in a billion that if I am not, in some way, gracefully burdened by all of my past cowardice, laziness and fear,  I will not have the powerful effect I want.

But I will have a powerful effect.

So the question, the question that I see is, what really do I want?  Is it world peace or is it people behaving how I think is best?  Is it trust, compassion and love? Or is it a pale, small world that conforms to my extraordinarily limited system of beliefs, justice, morality and love.

I have decided that I will stop complaining, as if I am 7 year old child not getting what I want and start taking responsibility for leading myself. I’m going to stop expecting people to change and start being more productive. I’m going to stop demanding that my “leaders” conform to my “desires” but instead drive my desires to the fore until the “leaders” become irrelevant. If my problem is a human being with a name that is not my name, then I don’t understand my problem and I’m making the world sicker than it was before I began to point my finger.

I’ve thought for too long that I must bow, must bend the knee, beg and be angry to appease the “leaders”. That I must punish and destroy so that “they” change to accommodate my sense of what’s right and wrong in the world. I’ve given up everything to “them” and given up the leader in me.

Now I check myself, I check myself to find that part of me that really would rather not do the work, the part of me that wants someone else to ultimately be responsible, to take the blame so I don’t have to. It’s there, within me.  So I am finding that part of myself and making peace and I am beginning to see that a “leader” doesn’t matter in the way I thought it did.

I am bigger then they are but only if I think so.

So it’s time for a change for me. Because I am bigger and more important to myself than any leader and with that recognition I can turn and face the adversity of the world, the destruction, the killing, the injustice, I can face these things and say that I want to live together in the world with you. It is your world as much as it is mine and I want to share. Maybe you disagree, but it’s ok because to me, as the leader of myself, I would rather LIVE TOGETHER in disagreement than DIE TOGETHER in disagreement.

In my experience the hardest thing is knowing what to do. What’s less hard is knowing what not to do. And I think that’s where I will start until I figure out what is absolutely right for me. I will be as clear as I can about what not to do and I will start there.

What’s not to do?

Lynching is not to do. No matter guilt or no guilt, no matter circumstance, no matter pain. If you lynch a person you have disintegrated all of human progress and goodness on the earth.

And rope is not the only tool of lynching.

That is what I see. That is what I will stand against. If that means ugliness must rear it’s head and live amongst me, I will find a way to make it work. I will not lynch.

I will not lynch.