My wife, son, and I went to hear Michelle Obama speak for the tour to promote her new book Becoming last night. Full disclosure...I haven’t read her book yet but the message behind last night’s conversation was a poignant and thought-provoking one.
The former First Lady spoke of her struggles growing up in a racially diverse middle class South Side Chicago neighborhood with not much in the way of material things but decent schools and very little crime. She explained how quickly the fabric of her neighborhood began to fall apart in the late 1960’s.
This collapse was sparked largely by unscrupulous real estate developers who began a campaign to coerce white homeowners to fear their neighbors of color, sell their homes, and move to new developments in the suburbs. Ultimately the real estate developers were successful in inducing fear which sparked hate, racial division, ruined countless lives and a large swath of Chicago. Of course, the developers’ goal was to make lots of money and they accomplished that as well.
This scenario sounded very familiar to me because I lived through something very similar in the 1980’s on the East Side of Columbus, Ohio. Our racially diverse lower middle class neighborhood with good schools was decimated over the course of just a year or so by the crack epidemic. All families of any racial background who could afford to move elsewhere and escape the violence did so. My family didn’t have the financial resources to move so we were stuck there and had to make the best of it. Thankfully my brother and I survived with a superficial scrapes, bruises, and a few hard lessons.
While listening to the talk, I started ruminating about the person I was becoming. I contemplated how much differently I think about politics since joining Steemit and getting involved in the blockchain/cryptocurrency movement. After being exposed to so many people of different countries, cultures, and opinions on this platform and through travel I feel much more like a citizen of the world.
We are all truly the sum of the people we spend the most time with. Just a little over two years ago I made many more emotion-based decisions instead of thinking critically. I also tended to blindly trust people more than I do now and sometimes suffered the consequences. Today, I feel much more comfortable in my own skin and in control of the trajectory of my future. I have many people in this space to thank for that.
All in all, the talk was worth the price of admission because it sparked the stream of consciousness that arrived at a valuable realization. In this physical world change truly is the only constant and if we're not changing and developing each and every day we're falling behind. If we're not working hard to define ourselves someone else will try to do it for us.
Which begs the question...Who Are You Becoming?
Thank you for reading,
Eric
*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.
Alarm Clock Dawn, one of the first full length novels published on the blockchain, and the book that started it all for me can be found HERE. Or Click Here to read it for free on the Steemit blockchain
My book on meditation, The Perfect Pause, is priced at $12.99 (paperback) and $4.99 (eBook). Buy the paperback and receive the eBook for free!