Creative extremists are we

“The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

I am somewhat of a wide-eyed individual. I am startled by many things and easily made to gasp. It isn’t so much that I’m easily impressed as I am easily fascinated. But I feel the need to say something about the people I work with. They may be the eighth wonder. The long hours. The big ideas. The sacrifice of these roadies and interns… though, as one roadie told me, ‘it is no sacrifice to exchange what is acceptable, expected, and planned for what is best: the living pursuit of a better world’.

My parents spent a while asking me when my ’season’ at Invisible Children would end. They don’t ask me that any more. The foundation in my voice when I say I am living my strengths, waking up with resolve, and working with people that I respect, even more, want to be… it is impossible to argue with that. My parents have realized that they couldn’t wish a better place for a child than that which makes them fully alive.

It is human nature to want to work hard, contribute to something important, and live deliberately. And to the degree that we forget this, or exchange it for comfort and safety, is the degree to which we live with a swelling bitter discontent that will one day manifest itself in broken relationships and lonely spirits. I, in my twenties, have been so lucky to learn this. Not so much my revelation as it is a muse that visited me in the form of IC. I commit to never forgetting it, and doing my part to keep those around me awake to it as well. That promise involves pursuing my talents and delighting in the talents of others, discovering the synergy between them that will produce that dangerously bankrupt word: change.  But positive change.  Change that looks like education, policy, peace, friendship, global community, art, and story telling.

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”  - MLK Jr.

I am proud to be maladjusted to the workings of this world. As evidenced by this post, I’m feeling sentimental and reflective today, so… cheers to the pursuit of something different. I lift my glass up to the 90 people on the 3rd and 4th floors of this office in San Diego (and all our maladjusted comrads in Uganda, and beyond). – Jedidiah