“Create your future from your future, not your past.” –Werber Erhard

If you’ve seen The Departed, you’re familiar with the scene where Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) looks on wistfully at a state police graduation ceremony and Barrigan tells him: “What are you looking at? Forget it. Your father was a janitor, and his son’s only a cop,” implying that Sullivan should aspire only so far because of the job his father held.

Fear sometimes leads me to view my life—the place I’m trying to get to—like that. When I was an undergrad, neither of my parents had a degree from a 4-year college (soon to change—love you Ma!). The same during my master’s program. So going in, I had no idea of what I was supposed to look like in those worlds, what connections I needed to make, what tools I needed to succeed. That is, while college plans were a given, my folks didn’t have friends who were scholars or doctors or writers—that world wasn’t second nature to me.

I accomplished what I came to do in both places and pat myself (and my family / support system) on the back. But I aspire still to do so much, in my own social/institutional educational pursuits as well as for the community (African American, national, and international).

Self-doubt and complacency, though, creep in. I think, “Well, my 9 to 5 is cool. Got money in the bank. I should just ‘enjoy life.’ My job keeps me busy enough without worrying about the next mental challenge.” And then, “Am I aspiring to ‘the next thing’ as a way of not facing my present reality? This is adulthood—going to work, paying bills, weekends are yours—am I trying to escape that?”

I always answer myself with “Today is good, but it’s not enough.” It’s healthy to have an appetite for more than what is in front of you—even when it might scare you to make a plan of action. I don’t mean that in the material consumption sense, or in the wandering lust sense. I mean it in the lifelong education sense. Did great minds such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, or Henry Thoreau worry about how their dedication might’ve been viewed as quirky or obsessive, if it aligned to the models of success around them?

Blessed with my family’s roots, I am a hybrid. I am carving a life for myself: scholar un-silo-ed in the way I improve the world, reading avidly, environmental justice expert. An emotional and mental world that includes adequate conflict resolution skills, more gentleness, a better listening ear, driven by the daily realization that there really is no reason to be afraid because the only limitations present are my own. Changing the knee jerk reactions that hold me back one at a time.

Creating new worlds, enjoying the process, and challenging yourself: So what does the road to a place where Cynthia is an author, professor, and framer of the environmental justice issue—keeping her ear to the ground but actually working to control the national debate? I’ll tell you when I get there.

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” –Michelangelo

Are you manifesting one of your dreams? What will it take for you to sculpt something out of nothing?

“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” –Audre Lorde

On Tuesdays we talked much about identity: the expression of it through values (Just a Nine to Five), just showing so much of it (Masking), challenging it (Complacency), finding out what matters most to it (Becoming a Master).

What is it, though, that makes the individual? How do we know when we are hearing our voice? What do those epiphanies look like, smell and feel like? Taste like? What prompts that saliva in the corners of your mouth, when you realize you’re on the cusp of owning yourself—world be damned.

Life is not a Malfunction Shirt: Respecting the Individual..

Our individuality—a must, because as social creatures we enjoy complements to ourselves and not clones—manifests itself in many aspects and not all at the same time: how we live, comb our hair, eat, work, raise our kids, relate to our families and partners. It can be artistic, social, cultural. We cultivate it to the point where we hear that drumbeat in everything we do.

And now I fear going too far in this post, because it is not a thing that can be explained—this expression of individuality or voice. How do I relate something that is like falling in love—what else could make us risk so much, make the rest of our

worlds seem so inconsequential?

I don’t intend to create a perfect picture here, a world where the self-possessed walk around with all the answers to life. By “individual” I don’t mean perfect. It has less to do with self-love, less to do with self-acceptance, even less to do with “living an artist’s life”—more to do with respecting your way and making sense of it, but not necessarily in having a set path. Great individuals have found their “calling” or “walked their walk” before they found themselves, god, security, acceptance or love (or acceptance of love). Or they find their voice and never find these other things; that laundry list is not a prerequisite to individuality.

I don’t want to make it sound like a linear process—“you accept yourself, you find your center, you find your voice.” Sometimes we’ll feel it more strongly. Other times we’ll wonder if it’s still there. If you work a nine-to-five as I do, you can’t express your individuality all day. Some conformity is needed to grease the machine. The principle is to keep that thread going. I have a daily grind, but it doesn’t stop me from scribbling writing ideas during the day or jotting a few lines on my lunch hour. Our power is in keeping that bass line going, not losing it. We keep that thread; we keep ourselves.