I’m grateful to be at the end of another day, another week. This has been one more long, exhausting, week. At the point at which I first started dictating tonight’s blog I’d been stuck in traffic for an hour and 45 minutes before I finally got home. Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy and appreciate the work that I do because that pleasure is often overshadowed by the overwhelmingly irritating demands of my daily commute. I can safely say that I literally hate traffic, and all the goodwill and positivity that I feel and build up over the course of the day is severely challenged and diminished by the nasty commute home, particularly on a dark, rainy evening like this. I have to force myself at times like these to focus on gratitude, and the idea that I am grateful to have traveled home safely through and among the thousands of cars creeping along the Beltway over the rain-slicked roads.
I am grateful to be at the end of the work week. It was a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly; in other words, it was a relatively normal week. I continue to be grateful that I work with such a good group of people that it makes some of the madness less troublesome. It makes the difficult work that we do a little bit easier, knowing that I have comrades who share similar concerns, passions, and interest in social justice as I do. The truth is that there a lot of people who don’t see the importance of the work that we do, that the quest for racial equality, social justice, equitable treatment for people with many varied, diverse identities matters. They fail to see how it is in their best interest that everyone succeeds and enjoys the basic blessings that so many of us take for granted (and about which I frequently blog.) There are days when I get so frustrated at people’s basic incivility to one another,the extent to which they operate in their own self-interest without regard for the well being of others makes me incredibly angry. I get discouraged and I wonder if we will ever get to a place where humans will truly love one another and learn to live together in harmony. I know, it sounds corny doesn’t it? But then I’ve never pretended to be anything but a somewhat hopeless dreamer who believes that it is actually possible that we can achieve such a thing. If I didn’t believe it I wouldn’t do the work I do. Heck, if I didn’t believe it I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Still, when I hit those places of discouragement, it is a blessing to have colleagues and friends and family around me who can pick up and carry on the work and I can rest for a little while.
Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox said, “The more we do, the more we see the potential of what is possible. We are not discouraged by the enormity of what lies ahead; we are motivated by it.” I confess there are times when I am in fact quite discouraged by the enormity of what lies ahead, but I am grateful to be surrounded by people who give me hope.
Yep, I’m grateful for the weekend. Come Monday morning, I’ll get up, get myself together, get back on the Beltway and head into another week of working for the wellbeing not only for the people that I normally serve, but basically for everyone. For the opportunity to do that on a regular basis, I am deeply grateful.
