A Time for Powerful Action
Welcome to the latest iteration of my blog which I’m calling The Wake-Up. And if anything was gonna wake me up, this election sure did the trick. Consider my ass “woke,” or at least half-woke. And I think a lot of people are feeling the same way. So, now what? What do we do with our half-woke, half-in denial, half-terrified-for-the-future-of-our-planet state of mind? Well, we start by banding together and owning the fact that our biggest failure is that we’ve been operating from a place of Powerless Reaction instead of Powerful Action.
An expression I picked up somewhere and fell in love with is, “let’s move out of the problem and into the solution.” What this really means is let’s move out of a reactive state of pointing fingers, shaming and blaming, and move into an active state of thinking about what we actually want as a country (and as individuals) and start taking steps in that direction. In other words, let’s create a vision for where we want this country to go, and then go for it.
I wrote an article on Medium awhile back called “How Hillary Can Win.” It’s all about how Hillary’s primary issue in this election stemmed from a lack of vision. Sure, there were some other extremely worrisome factors that led to her eventual loss, many of which I wholeheartedly believe, but at the end of the day I also believe that she could have won over those last few necessary voters if she’d had a coherent vision that they could connect to.
We, the citizens of this country, are suffering from the same issue. What I’m coming to realize is that real democracy is about waking up out of our finger-pointing and complacency and creating our own damn vision. The mistake many of us have been making for decades, maybe centuries, is in waiting for our leaders to create a vision/solution for us. We need to create our own vision and elect leaders who seem best-equipped to take on the task of turning that vision into reality.
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There are groups rising up all over the country as a result of this election, but without a coherent vision to rally around, it will be difficult for them to maintain the necessary enthusiasm and momentum to actually affect change. So let’s step up to this blank canvas and start painting, and as the vision takes shape we can recruit leaders to carry it out.
What’s your vision for the country? Let’s start a dialogue about how we can move out of Powerless Reaction and into Powerful Action, both as Americans and as individuals.
Gnaw on that while you’re gnawing on turkey.
Happy Thanksgiving!
John
I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @johnkalinowski
Originally published at johnkalinowski.com/.
