“Do the best you can until you know better.
Then when you know better, do better.”
— Maya Angelou
For the last several mornings I have woken uneasy. The news of protests thick in my head, the conversations I’ve had with my own family, with my kids, the things that I haven’t said, the people I haven’t reached out to… all of it turbulent and passing through me, like loud, pulsing, dark, frustrated clouds. I wake up and I am uncomfortable.
For the last several mornings I have tried to write, to say something of some significance but nothing comes, or when it does, it comes so careful that it says nothing. I feel silenced, I have been silenced by my fear of saying the wrong thing, the wrong way, by my fear of my own ignorance bred by my own white privilege and my own incomplete perspective. Not good enough, I tell myself. I stay quiet.
Today, I woke up and I had a group of young kids in my head. They weren’t really kids when I met them and they are very much adults now. They were students selected by their university as youth leaders who had excelled in school despite challenging circumstances. I was an invited speaker at the school and they had been chosen to meet with me for a roundtable conversation about being a changemaker. They each shared their story, most of them from the southside of chicago, all of them had worked hard in their communities. I sat at the table and listened, shared, engaged and fell in love with these young people. I wanted to show them my world, my context in Mexico, the little beach village where I had given my heart to make a difference. What I wanted more than anything was to share with them some of the leadership gifts that I had been given by my community. I was so lucky, so lucky that leaders before me, professional executive coaches, business professionals, seasoned activists and so many others had taken the time to mentor me, had invested in me and believed in me. I felt called to pass on this gift and so sitting in that office around the dark walnut table, inspired by their passion and grit, I invited them to a leadership workshop in Mexico. I had no idea how we would make that happen as most of them didn’t have passports and hadn’t ever left their home state, much less the country. I was enthusiastic and driven, I wanted to contribute. Months later, with the generous support of Dennis Barsema, a businessman and philanthropist, we made the visit a reality and eight students joined me in Mexico for a week-long leadership intensive.
I will never, ever forget the evening of their arrival. It was a balmy summer afternoon and our plan was to send them on a guided tour through town with some of our local students and then to all join up at the beach restaurant for the sunset. The students were fresh from the airport, they had city clothes, jeans, boots and sandals with heels. I remember wondering how the town would react to people who looked so different from them, I wondered how the students would feel. An hour after sending them off, I and the other people who would be leading the workshop headed to meet them. We wandered down to the beach and looked for them at the restaurant tables that line the sand. I suppose I expected to see them dutifully waiting for us to arrive, but they weren’t there. I pulled out my cell phone to check in with our local leaders and then my partner nudged me, he was smiling and looking towards the ocean. The sun was setting over the water in muted shades of red and orange, the waves were gentle and rolling, there was a soft haze in the air and a tenderness in the touch of the warm breeze. There in front of me were my “kids” – full grown adults, dark silhouettes, running and playing in the waves, fully dressed in their boots, shoes and jeans, soaked from head to toe, chasing each other, laughing, all wonder and beauty. I smiled, I laughed. The sweet spontaneity, the unbounded joy, the magnetic draw of the ocean erasing any sense of appropriateness, the mess of sand and shoes and water soggy everyone. There was something so exceptionally pure, so vibrant, so honest, and so alive in that moment. I don’t know if I cried then, but I cry now.
We had a remarkable week. It was powerful, it was hard. We shared where we came from, what that means to us and how it contributes, and sometimes challenges our leadership. These kids, some of them, had lives that I had only seen in the movies – gangs, drugs, suicide, violence, loved ones in jail, dead, dead in front of you. They deserved to feel broken, jaded, cheated and exhausted. But what I found remarkable was that as difficult as those experiences are and were for each of them as they shared them, there was this collective sense of optimism, that they were destined for more and better. They voiced a belief in our constitution and the rights they afforded, a compelling conviction that not just hope but action would lead to the future they wanted. They taught us the black national anthem – every one of them could recite it, even those with other racial identities, I didn’t even know it existed. I, and those that taught with me went into the week with something to teach but on that last day, when we gathered for a final reflection it was clear that we too had become students. I tried to somehow encapsulate my experience. I found myself overcome with gratitude for the unique spirit of each of them; Yannick, Randiss, Yuiji, Janel, Raven, Matt, Timi and Luke. Gratitude for having had the opportunity to stand alongside them for just a moment, gratitude for witnessing hope in its vibrant, jubilant and uncompromising expression. In the shadow of the murder of George Floyd and the outrage and outcry, I watch my “kids” on social media, building businesses, cleaning up their community, protesting. I find myself wanting to cheer them on, bolster them up, support their intrinsic youthful wisdom with some powerful insight, but it doesn’t come.
Yesterday and the day before I woke up uneasy, scared for everyone out there protesting, scared for this stupid world that has settled for some dreams at the expense of others. I have wanted to say something, to participate, to contribute, to show my support. But my support, even with my best intentions is inadequate, not good enough. I get it now and for once I will own not good enough as my truth, because it is true. I realize that for my entire life I have settled for dreams of a world that seemed reasonable, good enough. I was complicit in the belief that we were doing our best, that if we just tried harder we could create better, that it was on our shoulders and in our hands to make a better world. I still believe that. But my complicity is in the vacuity of the dream itself, and the failure of the dreamer. The dream that I understood was never reasonable, it was never big enough, it didn’t hold everyone, it wasn’t for everyone, it wasn’t enough. I see that now. I’m sorry. I can do better. We can dream bigger.