Opening Remarks on MLK, Jr. Day

MLK, Jr. Day Reflections

Gordon Parks Center for Culture & Diversity

I don’t plan to say much.  My main role today is simply to frame some questions for table discussions.  We want most of this time to involve all of us talking together about how we can move forward as a community that takes responsibility for our own future.

But there are two virtues that I think will serve us well in the years of a Trump Presidency.

The first virtue is simply the ability to concentrate or focus.

I was in NYC last weekend for a friend’s birthday.  Long story short my friends are night owls and I’m not.  So it’s 2am and I’m still there at the bar with them, about four hours past my bedtime.  But I did enjoy watching people play a jumbo-sized version of Jenga.  The bar was loud and busy and here were these people right in the middle of it all, playing Jenga, completely focused on carefully removing blocks from the structure.  It’s hard to concentrate when there’s lots of noise.  But that’s exactly what we all need to do right now.

 

I’m not here today to talk about President-elect Trump.  I’m here to do just the opposite – to say let’s take our community life into our own hands.  But, I will say just one thing about Trump as a user of social media.  Trump uses Twitter like a 13- year old girl at a slumber party whose parents just gave her an i-phone: what we’re getting is a non-stop barrage of unfiltered, stream of consciousness, anxious attempts to appear confident and comfortable in her own skin.  (An immediate apology is in order to all thirteen year old girls . . . ).  And here’s the thing: it’s really distracting.  Now cable news has a continual news-source: reporting on and responding to Trump’s tweets. 

So if we are not careful, we will get caught up in this distracting noise.  And so you will have to focus and concentrate.  What is it you want to build?  What are you working on?  Where do you want your best energy to go?  All of us only get so much time, and when we die, I highly doubt we’re going to say, “I wish I spent more time watching cable news and camping out on Twitter or Facebook.”

The second virtue, closely related to the first, is the ability to manage disappointment.  This virtue we might also call “growing up” or “becoming adults” or “taking responsibility for our lives.”

One feature built into every human life is the movement from a childhood where you’re dependent on authority figures towards an adulthood where you begin to take responsibility for your life.

My grandfather Roy Armstrong left home when he was 14.  (Now this is quite amazing to me because my oldest is 16, and we’re still working on turning off lights when you leave a room).  Now I don’t know exactly why he left home at 14.  I don’t know whether things weren’t good at home, or whether it was about poverty, or about his own need for independence.  But from 14 on he worked and provided for himself without any reliance on parents.

Things are a little different now.  I think most kids don’t get on their own feet until 24 or 34.  But all of us have to navigate this movement from reliance and dependence on parents to a more adult life.

When I was young, my family had a blue suburban with a wood-grain stripe, and bench seats.  After trips out of town to eat or shop, we would return home late at night.  And I remember as a child thinking what a wonderful luxury it was to be able to just go to sleep, because my dad would drive the car and figure out how to get us home.  And now I’m the dad and I drive the car and my own kids sleep.  There is something really wonderful about being an irresponsible child.  But the problem occurs when we never outgrow our need for authority figures to protect us and make us feel safe. 

Parents, pastors, and politicians are just regular people with their own problems.  And the sooner we get past relying on them as comforting authority figures, the better off we’ll be.  Growing up means giving up the childish dream that these authority figures will chart the way forward, provide direction for our lives, fix us and heal us.  So disappointment in authority figures is completely normal.  And it can be the prompt we need to take matters into our own hands and to take responsibility for our own lives.

Questions for Table Discussions:  see handout