This post originally appeared on the Breakfast Club Blog on September 20, 2010.
I recently took a road trip up north to the bay area to congregate with about 70,000 like-minded individuals at the Power to the Peaceful concert.
Road trips always seem to reignite the ‘rebel fire’ in my heart. My soundtrack included a number of folk songs that have never ceased to inspire me. As I began to listen to the lyrics of Ani Difranco’s Willing to Fight, I found myself a bit discouraged for a moment. I felt that after 10 years of working as a youth worker, I had not felt a sense of accomplishment in awhile. I felt my fire fading. Then, I kept listening,
“cause I know the biggest crime/is just to throw up your hands/say this has nothing to do with me/I just want to live as comfortably as I can/you got to look outside your eyes/you got to think outside your brain/you got to walk outside you life/to where the neighborhood changes”.
After that verse, I remembered that our profession doesn’t ever come with instant gratification.
We do what we do everyday, carrying in our hearts the faith that the final product of our work is that the youth of our communities are succeeding in creating a better community for themselves and for their children’s children. In moments where we feel discouraged by the ‘x-factors’ of our life’s work, we must sing aloud and proud the last verse of Willing to Fight:
“I was a long time coming/I’ll be a long time gone/you’ve got your whole life to do something/and that’s not very long/so why don’t you give me a call/when you’re willing to fight/for what you think is real/for what you think is right.”
For breakfast, I had homemade veg juice and toast with avocado with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.
Author Profile: @csecada