July 21, 2004

• Often times in life, we don't get to choose who we work with.  In school, we don't get to choose our teachers or our classmates.  At work, we don't get to choose who our fellow employees are.  We don't always get to choose who our relatives are.  Yet, in all those circumstances, people do the best they can.  How come then, when it comes to community work, people run away from those people that they "can't work with" and basically refuse to work with them.  I don't get along with everybody, but I suck it up when I have to work with someone that I don't particularly like on a personal level.  I make the best of the situation I'm in.  Why?  Because the community and the cause is bigger than me.  It's more important than me. 

  
  

  Someone may argue that rather than go through the trouble, why not avoid it altogether.  Again, because the vision is more important.  It's more important than egos, it's more important than reputation, it's more important than selfishness.  I wish the community leaders could get past all the rhetoric, and come together and really make a decision for everyone, rather than looking out for themselves.

  
  

  One excuse used is, "I can't blame them."  That's a really weak argument.  If you've ever seen A Time to Kill, a gentleman kills a man that had raped his daughter and wasn't convicted in court.  Let's use this "I can't blame him" argument.  Then who do you blame?  Did the guy shoot himself?  Some would say he asked for it.  That drags both parties into the ground.  All in all, you can't hold someone down without getting down there yourself. 

  
  

  I want to say I'm above all this.  Really, though I'm witnessing it happening.  I'm in the mix, because I care, like so many others, trying to sort things out and make things right and okay.  I feel like Clark Kent right now, meaning the powerless Superman amid the Crisis of Infinite Earths.  Okay, so it's not that dramatic.  But you get my drift.

  • 11:41 am
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