I have a video that I’d like you to watch. It’s a minute and 54 seconds, which I think is reasonable. I’m not asking you to watch a five minute video – I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m pointing this out because like the President of United States, I, too, love the art of the deal, and this is my attempt at the door-in-the-face compliance technique. Now that I have your attention, even if you’ve already seen it, I’d like you to press play on this video and for two short minutes consider very seriously throughout every frame that you are the girls in this video:
Welcome back. Did you see yourself? I saw you. I saw all of us. I don’t mean to say we are all a room full of white girls on sticks that have been fashioned with horse heads and are not so much as riding these sticks, as we are full on sprinting with them between our legs without any real commitment to form. I mean to say that we are all doing our best to unburden ourselves from a weighted existence one distraction at a time, running and jumping through life on a stick and a prayer so that someday we will know true peace at the finish line with friends.
Do our choices always make sense? No, they don’t. We might find ourselves mid-jump over a barrier marked “JUMP” with no less than six arrows instructing us where to do so, when really what else might we do in that scenario other than crash right through it and then down we go onto a pile of plastic, and it is here things might feel like they’ve gone off the rails, but still we ride. Or we might decide what is right and true despite it all is dressaging our way down a line less traveled, not outside but inside, stale air on our face. We are truly wild and free. I love that about us.
And in these things that we’ve committed ourselves to, based on someone else’s limited understanding of what we’re even supposed to be doing, we may not seem like the best at it or even very good, but we are at least the fastest, and isn’t that something? Saddle up, friends – there are obstacles at every turn.
