By the might of goodness, to restore what’s broken, so that all may thrive.
Before we get to my life mission statements. Here are the words I have for 2024:
The meek will inherit the earth
Wait until you see the whites of their eyes.
There is a time and a place for everything under the sun.
Be Dangerous. Do Justly. Love Mercy.
Restoration alone brings victory.
For the details on this message for 2024: Click Here
Mission Statements:
My mission is to help increase our collective capacity for friction between each other, all while growing our ability to enjoy one another. The mission is to use this increased maturity to stand for the rights of all people of every nation so that all might thrive to the greatest extent possible.
You own yourself; understanding the depth of this statement unlocks everything else I discuss. The mission is to have the courage to live life as yourself and love others as yourself. It is to pursue restoration for everything that is broken. In restoration alone is there full, real and meaningful progress. There is no more consequential restoration than to restore self.
The mission is to face the most shameful and canceled topics without fear or favor. It is to restore the meaning of words, therefore stripping them of their power over us.
All of the above is exclusively possible through the might of goodness, through the ferocious terror that goodness might place in the minds and hearts of evil men. Every mission comes up short where goodness is found to be weak.
Why:
History tells a story of a powerful few sewing division and fear to maintain that power.
It is up to us to see that the buck stops here!
There is a great tension between what is Perfect and Practical.
Misunderstandings are often created in the gap between these two pursuits.
It is important to keep the purity of perfection in sight. It is a great and guiding light. Yet all know the only way forward is by taking practical steps.
For a vast majority of us, the conversation around perfection creates little disagreement. This is good. If this were not so, we would have a whole different set of issues on our hands.
As we move the needle towards practicality things tend to get derailed.
And in the calamity of this derailment, we forget our common purpose.
And in this forgetting, we begin to create simple straw men out of those we disagree with. This allows our ideas to feel pure & powerful, it is the genesis of ignorance.
And it is in this ignorance that we begin to dehumanize.
And it is in this dehumanization we then allow the justification for them to be defeated by any means necessary.
And when any means of winning are are the table, we create the environment for the horrors of history to not just be repeated but be magnified.
As often as needed, take your conversations back to that common goal.
We must put the onus on ourselves to find the goodness in those with whom we disagree.
Outside of this understanding, we will certainly belittle the horrors of the past 100 years, not in the shaming of their great revulsion but in the comparative smallness of their destruction.
How:
In our greatest differences, rather than trying to out-shout one another, we should all dare to out-befriend one another.
We must learn to rejoice when we get offended. Offense reveals where we need to grow. Overcoming offense can lead to world-changing moments.
One of the greatest men of the past centuries is Daryl Davis, a black man who overcame offense to befriend Klansmen, resulting in the head of the KKK stepping down.
Despite the obvious moral righteousness of those who openly oppose the Klan, their efforts have borne little fruit. It took a man with the courage to befriend his enemy to get the Imperial Wizard of the Klan to step down.
The object of our scorn should always be the ignorance and not the person behind it.
It is up to us to find the beauty in the “other” through perceived or even very real darkness.
We should dare be like Daryl Davis.
