Kwame Speaks: Modeling After Models

"For those who live with any full consciousness of our history, our present condition and our future, there is really little choice if the various worlds of fantasy are to be avoided. Each of us must find the place in the struggle where he or she can best stand- or admit that we cannot stand." Indeed Vincent Harding's unerring words ring true. We are completely unprepared for the work which will meet us, should the few among us decide to engage the harsh realities blacks face.

The rule that hard work pays off is sounded repeatedly to us. But can it really be true when everyone is unequally paid for their work? This, to me, is false. How, for example, can one truly repay a parent? How does one return the favor to one's biological and psychological progenitors, to those who have given sacrifices beyond one's recognition or knowledge?

How can one repay those who, whether formally or informally were one's actual parents, performed a custodial and decisive role in one's proper growth and development? What justice can thankful words exchange for their actions? And what justice are our right actions if they can but hopelessly equal the inconceivable gift of their sacrifice? It seems to me; if we can generalize the case, that service is itself the single, satisfying, though incomplete, return for sacrifice.

Often those who have given themselves as parents have asked the single request of our good turnout. And each of us cannot but multiply the return of the favor by considering how their gift may be multiplied in service to others. But we need not boil service into that which is seen in public and open view. For our studies and coursework, are, with due consideration, themselves qualities of service, as each of us is contributing to a future world improved through our present labors.

Life itself appears to be a continual training, a process of growth and development from which identity is shaped. Indeed the process of learning itself is the consultation of many teachers, living and deceased, modern and historical, direct and indirect, to instruct us in the creation of ideals and refinement of goals which shall later be our guides. Thus the issue of training is most significant.

We should enact models of being which agree with our personalities, enlarge our abilities, and contribute to society generally. For it is through these things, especially Service, that we make ourselves most agreeable to a Self in a disagreeable world later encountered.

So may we Learn, and Be, and Do, for the betterment of ourselves and others, that we widen our sphere of influence through becoming serviceable models. For as we culture and manage ourselves Today, we anticipate the inevitable harvest of Tomorrow. Through this work will be the community that will bring forward into an anticipated world.

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Damarius Johnson
(Published 3-30-11)