impact : mackenzian

January 30, 2017 By Keisha McKenzie

Just degrees removed

From above, clusters of people sit around round tables in a brightly light and white-tiled atrium. — Photo credit: Daria Shevtsova

For the last twenty years, Hollywood’s cliché has been that everybody’s somehow connected to the actor Kevin Bacon. Tracing the six or fewer degrees between community nodes like Bacon and other community members can be a fun way to prove that Disney was right: It’s a small world, after all.

I’m two degrees removed from the US Senate chaplain who, at the inaugural luncheon last week, prayed for the president’s success at his “God-appointed duties.”

I’m one degree removed from one of the drafters of the reauthorized PATRIOT and FREEDOM Acts (the FREEDOM Act, Congress’ attempt at a do-over after Snowden, limited the government’s automatic access to US consumers’ phone records but allows the government to access records from our telecom companies with prior judicial approval).

And not only is my social network full of people directly and indirectly affected by Friday’s executive order on immigration, but I also discovered tonight that I know at least one of the House of Representatives staffers who signed non-disclosure agreements with the current administration to help write it.

That’s the tightness of human relationship in a world of 7.89 billion.¹ We are never far from each other.

They, whomever they are, are always closer than we imagine: the queer Muslim niece, the limited government staffer who wants to be loyal to their party, the pastor praying, as he’s described it, like a lamb among wolves.

There are times, like this week, when I’d rather deny my proximity to those a few degrees across community nodes from me. But that’s not possible, nor wise.

I hope that confronting this reality again tonight will make me more conscious about how I talk about the people who are Other to me, different from me, vastly unlike me by circumstance or by practice. And I hope that, somehow, some of them—especially the ones writing executive orders this winter—will remember too: we’re just degrees removed, not different in kind.

This is an oddly specific over-estimate. I guessed. I meant to look it up before I published this post, and forgot. The current number of people on Earth is just under 7.5 billion. [Back to text: ◄]

February 10, 2014 By Keisha McKenzie

Photo: Success

"Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out." —R. Collier — “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” —R. Collier

Repetition makes ethereal things real.

And daily work makes momentum possible.

May 7, 2013 By Keisha McKenzie

Going Beyond

Based on the writings of William Arthur Ward, a 20th Century optimist and inspirational writer:

I will do more than belong—I will participate.
I will do more than care—I will help.
I will do more than believe—I will practice.
I will do more than be fair—I will be kind.
I will do more than forgive—I will forget.
I will do more than dream—I will work.
I will do more than teach—I will inspire.
I will do more than learn—I will enrich.
I will do more than give—I will serve.
I will do more than live—I will grow.
I will do more than suffer—I will triumph.

Always do what you can where you can.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” ― Robert F. Kennedy