We need to change.

There is a quote by Mary Oliver that has been sitting on my desktop for many months now.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

I used to think that I loved that quote. 

Lately, I read it and the words leave a faint, bitter trail on my tongue. They linger there and make me wonder if it isn't a privilege that I am able to ask myself that question.

Last week, a young boy in my class said that he would amount to nothing because he was "too dark." Earlier the same week, he turned four years old.

I don't know if he truly understood the implications of what he said or its severity. A part of me doesn't want to know. A selfish part of me wants to believe that he didn't. 

But it doesn't matter what I want. 

The reality is that our society does not see black children as precious. We do not value their bodies and their minds the same way we do others'. Meanwhile, police brutality rages. Schools close. Prisons expand. The death toll rises.

Meanwhile, I pray that I will learn to be a good teacher to my students. I pray that we will not tire of learning our history and acknowledging its brutal injustice. I pray that our society does not tire of change.

God knows we need to change.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over again announcing your place
in the family of things.

By Mary Oliver