Planting seeds

Change takes time.

Communities take time to change.  People take time to change.  I take time to change.

I know that the change that I want to be a part of is a far more intensive investment than a 30 day experience.

But with that goal in mind, every July I keep packing as much as I can carry into my backpack and traipsing around the world for a new adventure.  

The dreams that I have for the places that I go are longterm.  Nothing that will ever be attained in a 30 day timeframe.

But I still go.

I know that my work in a community may be as quickly forgotten as my name to the woman that served me my coffee this morning.  

True and lasting change takes time.  Like, it takes generations. It doesn’t come in a thirty day span.  And I am well aware of that.  Even so,

I don’t think that my thirty days are wasted days.  I don’t think that I would be of better use to humanity if I traded my world travels for time at the beach.  

I think that it matters, even if it is short-lived.

It’s like planting seeds. Sometimes they grow.  Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes you see them break through the soil.  Sometimes you don’t.

Sometimes you see the plants of someone else’s seeds.

Sometimes you plant seeds, sometimes you water the seeds, sometimes you cultivate the soil.  But you always garden.

That’s what motivates me to give my July in a new world without ever knowing what may come from it.  That’s what motivates me to give my life to education and plant roots so deeply that i have seen my first students graduating college.

So I will keep giving my Julys for as long as I can.

I will keep going, keep planting.

I go because going makes a new me.  Every year i become a new version of myself.  

I see the world with fresh eyes.  And I come home to my own world with fresh eyes.  

Gardening is good for the world, good for my soul.   Even if I'm not around to see the flowers.

Learning rhythm

You know when you see a group of people participating in some sort of rhythmic activity and one person is swaying the wrong way?  Or one person is clapping on the off beat?  Or one person is singing off key?

Usually they are overly enthusiastic, clueless as to the fact that they aren't acting in unison with the group, and white. 

I spent a good portion of my life being this person.  It took years of social conditioning for me to realize that I am functionally tone deaf.  

It's ok.  I've accepted my reality. 

I thrive on other forms of self expression, while appreciating dance and music and rhythm from a safe distance. 

I really consider it a service to all of humanity. 

It feels like watching a bird fly.  I cannot fathom how it lifts from the ground and soars through the air.  I cannot flap my arms fast enough to join it.  I can merely look up in awe.

This is my relationship with music, rhythm, and dance.

Once I started my graduate program I began to understand how this relationship developed to its current state. 

I took courses in multiple intelligences, brain development, and social/emotional intelligence that gave me the proper framework to understand my connection and my disconnection to rhythm.  I was learning a language to give words to feelings that I could never express. 

After studying the human brain and how it develops through childhood, I realize that I missed the window of development that would have connected the neuropaths in my brain to help me learn rhythmically.  

One of the most important lessons that I learned in this realm was that I have an internal desire, even a need, for rhythm.  It is scientifically proven that rhythm helps to create internal order in human beings. 

So now, at 32, I can't keep a beat.  But the innate need to identify with rhythm has still been written in my soul, just as it is written in yours. 

It's a universal language that every human shares, even if some of us dysfunctionally express it.

I think that I've always understood this truth about people and about myself on some level.  I have a deep respect for the traditional music of other cultures. I am fascinated by the art of dance, specifically if it is tribal and there are stories being told. 

None of this head knowledge helped me keep a beat or sing in tune, but it helped me understand a language without words.  

It helped me understand why I connect with rhythm, even if I cannot connect my hands to make an acceptable form for myself.

Even more valuable than the cognitive understanding of these concepts was the way that they translated in my life. 

As a part of a drumming circle in 2012, I was taught how to listen and identify the "spine" in the music.  I learned how to find the beat that was supporting the song and how to return to it when I get lost. 

I learned how to cope with my whiteness in public musical engagements, but more importantly, I remembered how to find my spine when I get lost in life.

I can't tell you how many times since then that I have been in the midst of chaotic situations, felt myself stray from the rhythm of my heart, and then reminded myself to find my "spine" and return to my beat. 

When I'm surrounded by the comforts of my daily life, I find my spine more readily.  I listen for my family, my friends, my vocation, and the rituals of my life and I realign myself accordingly.  

When I'm half way around the world, when my life is drastically different, it can be really difficult to hear, to align.  

I have to seek it out.  I have to, in a sense, fight for it. 

I have to quiet my soul and sit in the silence.  I have to listen intently.

I have to.

Because I know I need it.  And because I know that I can. 

I can because I know that it has been written on my soul, just as it has on yours.