Early 2015 –
Powerful words. It’s funny how putting up resistance and leading your life in certain ways can cause others to rethink theirs.
When you say hear about being the change, you always think of some big, grand gesture—something Dr. King-like or Ghandi-esque. Not about how inspiring your actions can be to others.
I rant a lot; it’s nothing new. Took a few years off from it publicly but its who I am. Alot has changed with me and the world. I went back to school as an adult and returned to the workforce enlightened. For some odd reason, I settled into old habits of retail. It’s one of those things where you say it’s for money while you’re taking classes. Then, before you know it, you’re running the place and making just enough money that you can’t quit.
So I ended up the lowest man on the totem pole. I did my best to fit into the capitalist structure. If you believe it enough, you still won’t really believe it. At least that’s the way it was for me. As I was pushed, prodded and galvanized in a capitalist retail environment—testing my beliefs, using the philosophies and sociological knowledge that I gained in my return to school in everyday life—I quickly discovered this was going to destroy me.
What I didn’t notice, however, was that I was being watched. Not in a creepy stalker way. Not in a, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” kind of way and not in a “put that back or you’ll face prison time” kind of way. It was more a “So if I continue with my business degree, I’m going to end up like that guy” way.
I worked in a supermarket with a lot of teenagers and early twenty-somethings working their way through college. They were trying to figure out what to do with their lives just like me. Apparently, ranting about the system, critiquing the normal way of doing things, was noticed. At least by one member of the customer service staff. A member who was, up until this point, going to school to become a business leader.
Somewhere in my “It’s a supermarket, not a nuclear reactor”, and “it’s a dollar-off coupon, not genocide in Sub-Saharan Africa”, comments was the spark of wanting to do something better. Something meaningful with their life, rather than spend it stuck in a box for 45+ years making someone else money for a living. This person who took my ramblings to heart has since decided to change their studies to medicine and currently has a year left until completing their nursing degree.
Now, modern American medicine aside, the moral of my story here is that someone who listened to my passive arguments decided to change their life from one of potential greed to one spent helping people in need. It’s pretty scary that I was a nagging voice in someone else’s head for once.
Sometimes you don’t have to protest in front of a million people or collect a million pieces of trash to make a difference. Sometimes making a difference is just being yourself around the right people at the right time.
I wish them all the best in their endeavors, and I hope maybe, I just might inspire you in yours someday.”
2025 Update – The Compelled Life and the Great Activator
It’s strange to revisit that original article, a snapshot of a different life. One spent wrestling with the system but ultimately settling for passive influence as the only viable path. For years, I chose the comfort of moderate financial stability over the innate feeling I had to stand up and fight. Internalizing that quiet debate about whether a life of known comfort is worth the disappointment of remaining silent. Like Gandalf consoling Frodo; its the moment where you realize fate has chosen you, and reluctantly, you have to accept the burden. I’d convinced myself for a long time to sit on the sidelines, being a nobody, deciding the constant argument wasn’t worth the results.
But much has changed in a decade.
Then came the intellectual tipping point; the victory symbolized by Mamdani. Yhe sight of a social democratic candidate winning the mayoral election in New York—was the moment. Seeing the allegedly fringe ideas that myself and others had been advocating for years suddenly become popular and more importantly, possible, changed everything.
The arguments aren’t niche anymore. The apathy I couldn’t combat has been swallowed by the sheer necessity of the moment. We have reached a critical realization: there are and have always been more of us than them. We can change the way we live, we can change the way we take care of each other, and we can ultimately change everyone’s lives for the better.
History has shown us repeatedly what happens when wealth accumulates in the hands of the few to the point it is today. It also shows us that the resulting pushback too often ends in violence. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Democracy still works. We can tax that wealth legally and peacefully and, in doing so, raise everyone’s boats with the tide.
This is the Great Activator I’ve been waiting for, the clear moment when our purpose is undeniable. I’ve spent the last 20 years learning, reading, interacting, and growing for this very moment. The future is ours if we want it. History lessons must guide us, not hold us in place or worse, hold us behind. It’s time to take the car keys off our parents and grandparents and be the adults they don’t believe we can be.
