When to fight: (Day 85…)

Were you told fighting is wrong when you were a kid?

I’m not sure I was… I don’t think I was ever encouraged to go out and thump people but I don’t think I was ever particularly discouraged from standing up for what I believe in either.

There are days I think I believe in so much that I can’t possibly feel passionately about one more thing and then I find one more thing… and yet not everything encourages me to stand up and fight.

So what does?

I’m starting to believe that to fight is also to love.

Not just to have a belief, but a desire — a love for something bigger than you something other than yourself. The world is crying out for more of it, we are hungry for that kind of passion and yet apathy and helplessness are on the rise. Their cure? Love. No single other emotion can inspire the sustainable fight in any of us.

Anger and frustration burn hot and fast — a flash and it’s gone.

You see, it’s not a competition. Anger can help you win a contest but life isn’t a game.

If you are fighting because you love when something gets you down on the mats it’s going to get you down still swinging, because it’s worth it. If you lose you are going to show up to fight another day, because love is always worth it. The only emotion I can think of big enough, strong enough to allow a person to dig that deep within themselves to show up and fight another day? Is love.

People can fight in different ways. You don’t have to stand up and thump people — in fact it’s been proven a not very effective method of persuasion (satisfying in the moment, maybe)… but if more people fought the way Martin Luther King Jr. did we’d have far fewer issues in the world today.

We are taught from an early age we should stand up to bullies and yet as adults we allow ourselves to be bullied everyday. So how do you fight? When is it right? When is it wrong? Why do we NEED so desperately to fight more often?

It’s so very simple.

If you care about it? If you love it? If you believe in it? You show up, you speak up, and you fight. Because it’s bigger and more important than just you.

I had a conversation recently with someone much older than me — someone who had all the power in the world to change their situation but felt more power in judging the people who didn’t share his values because those people did not have his value system. His perspective on the issue wasn’t necessarily wrong, but his attitude? Was in serious need of adjustment. He had given up believing he needed to work toward change — instead he had become entitled to it.

I can’t tell you how often of late people have reminded me that I’m never going to affect change — that it doesn’t matter how often I show up and try to — that government is just going to do what they want…

I want to shake those people!

The people who want to complain but don’t want to show up and do the work to enable change.

If you love something enough you show up even if it doesn’t result in immediate change — because you are working toward something of sustained value.

So I’m going to sit here and love more — and when I show up to fight?

Watch out.