Unity

We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground.

Jim Wallis

I have spent most of the last few days in “thought”, which has its strengths and its weaknesses. I firmly believe that my success has been derived by my ability to “think” my way around and through things. Most often, by being “preactive”! Yes, “preactive” is spelled correctly. For context, check out Flash Foresight by Daniel Burrus, page 44, for an explanation!

For me, thinking too much is also a weakness and probably not for reasoning you may envision. Thinking too much can become a very exhausting proposition for me because I have such a desire to change the world and to protect people. I take things on emotionally far more than I really have the capacity to handle. Even knowing this full well, I still do it.

I don’t want to rehash 2020 because, for one, you’re probably tired of hearing about it, and secondly, I just don’t live in the past. However, when 2021 mimics 2020, what is one to do? Without going into every recent event, if it’s okay, I would just say, I find myself on an emotional rollercoaster.

Today I just happened to click on this link: https://theundefeated.com/features/the-story-behind-the-high-school-basketball-team-that-took-a-knee-in-oklahoma/. This article is about a story that I had already heard about, but had chosen to ignore. Clicking that link was simply a mistake. All I could do was to sit at my desk, dazed, and kind of numb. I marveled at the courage of these young women and, at the same time, I was extremely frustrated.

If you have followed Collectively Me long enough, I think my words, edited by my friend Gregory Nelson, have laid out a foundation that makes this article tie other articles together. I have mentioned before that Collectively Me all came together during a very turbulent time in our history. In one single year, there was so much pain and suffering for too many, pain that in one way or another seemed to touch most of us. It is hard to imagine a situation where anyone escaped from some level of stress, anxiety, or loss.

For me, and to no one’s fault but my own, I suffered because of my burning desire to be a change agent and to positively impact in the life of others. As I have said many times, I struggled. The bible tells us that, “TO WHOM MUCH, IS GIVEN MUCH IS REQUIRED.” I think at times I may carry this beyond my abilities and the normal proposition of rational evaluation.

I live this double life of having tremendous benefits and, at the same time, having tremendous guilt. I really do want everyone to enjoy the same benefits I am afforded. I live this double life of being successful in the corporate world and yet, overlooked at the same. I live the life of being the “Uncle Tom”, yet I still maintain the desire of equality for everyone. Now more than ever, I sometimes stand confused, feeling like running exhaustedly on a moving treadmill going nowhere fast!

I also have written and firmly believe that life has and always will present us with challenges, heartbreak, and painful moments. It’s just a way of life that seemingly will never change. I honestly can’t find any grounding for this fact in the Word. So, what are we to do? Quite simply, we just bust through because that’s what we do.

Additionally, I have mentioned in the past that our lives will also always be about give and take. My personal desires are that I will always give more than I take. I think our innate humanly reaction is to take credit when we are right and ignore reality when we are wrong. As I have grown, it has become more important to me to reverse that mindset.

That is another specific reason I chose to expose myself, to come out the closet, and to give Collectively Me life. My desires are to be a conduit to build bridges of unity that brings us closer together. By the way, together doesn’t mean that we don’t have differences. I once heard Alley Love, my Peloton crush, make a powerful quote. Alley said, “Our uniqueness makes us different, but our differences can bring us together”. I have found that sentiment true more times than not when I keep an open mind, especially when I listen attentively rather than the alternative.

I believe I first heard that from her around 2019. At the time I knew I liked the quote so I wrote it down. But honestly, at that time, I scratched my head often trying to truly understand. It wasn’t until I started writing this piece that Alley’s words began to truly make sense to me.

On April 20, 2021, a verdict was handed down in the death of George Floyd. I, like most of you, probably watched with some version of stomach knots for two days, anticipating what the outcome would be. I honestly had absolutely no intentions of watching. I anticipated I would do what I traditionally do, which is to bury my head in the sand and deal with it later after coming up for air. This time however, I found myself watching and reading text from friends of various races and backgrounds who were sending me various comments.

As the verdicts were revealed, one would probably think that I was filled with some sigh of relief and joy, but not exactly. I did have a sigh of relief, not specific to the verdicts, or because that is what I wanted, but because I was relieved because I believe the jury got it right.

But here is why I had absolutely NO joy in the verdicts: “WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN HERE IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE.” Lives have FOREVER been changed! I am not going to write any further on this topic. You fill in your blanks as you wish.

Our history has shown that we are a country that has always risen up to respond to injustice. I firmly believe that we will do so again. I want to believe that, as we continue to turn the page on the last 18 months or so that we have the opportunity to come out stronger than ever. I don’t believe that it will be easy and I don’t believe that it will come without a collective acceptance of our differences. I can tell you that I believe I owe it; we owe it; you owe it to the generations to come, to make their landscapes richer than ours.

I don’t know your path; I only know my own. My path is the only path in which I have control. I choose the difficult task of rising up every day with a desire for unity, the desire to allow the uniqueness that makes us different to bring us together.

The artists King and Country, in collaboration with Kirk Franklin and Tori Kelly, composed a song titled, “Together”. I play this song on repeat all the time. These are some of the lyrics of the song: “We are going to make it through this hand in hand. And if we fall, we will fall together…And when we rise, we will rise together…Together we are dangerous. Together with our differences, together we are bolder, braver, stronger!”