As laudable as our plans to Making A Difference are, as humans it is sometimes difficult to avoid getting waylaid by the difficulty of effecting change and making that difference. But even as it is difficult to mutate from one state to another, change is essential and if we cannot accept change and become willing to change for the goodness of the world, we will be swept away.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Tony Kushner wrote a musical play in 2004 with Jeanine Tesori, Caroline, or Change, about the struggle for civil rights in the sixties. Its protagonist was an African American mother of four working as a made, afraid of what the future held for her. In a pivotal scene in the play a friend urged her about the importance of change.
“I know it hurts to change. It actually hurts, learning something new, and when you full-grown, it's harder, that's true. It feels like you gotta break yourself apart, it feel like you gotta break your own heart, but folks do it. They do. Every day, all the time - alone, afraid, folks like you. You've got to let go of where you been. You've got to move on from the place you're in.Don't drown in that basement. Change or sink.”
The words are evocative and a lesson to anyone in times when struggling to change presents difficulty. Think of great leaders of the past willing to effect change, no matter how difficult. Instead of sinking in the status quo and all that came with it, they were willing to break themselves apart, break their own hearts to change and to effect change around them. That's what going M.A.D. is about. That's how one Makes A Difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment