In early 2017, I attended a training session to learn more about activism. I had never participated in a meeting like that before, but I had decided to volunteer and didn’t know where to start. More than one hundred people showed up for the event.
I found myself grouped with four other strangers, and we introduced ourselves, sat down at our table, and were ready to learn. We had pens, notepads, and our thinking caps on.
A facilitator kicked off the training session with a simple exercise. Each table received one poster-sized blank sheet of paper and a handful of colored markers.
Our instructions: “Draw the world that you’d like to live in.”
That seemed pretty straightforward.
My teammates and I talk about the need for healthcare, so we drew a big hospital, then a river, and some beautiful trees. We then added a school, a city, and started filling in the rest of our perfect society.
Suddenly, from across the large (but packed) room, we heard people started to cry out. We ignored the disruption and kept working in our beautiful city.
Then I noticed a guy walking up to a table near ours, and he stopped to look at the drawing that people had made and ripped one of the four corners off. He didn’t say a word and just went on. The stunned team cried out and started to patch together the damage that had been done.
Distracted for a bit, I sensed someone coming to our table and looked up to see a young woman come to our table, glance down, and then tear off the bottom right corner of our drawing. We had just lost our hospital.
I looked over at my teammates, and the guy next to me started drawing another hospital to replace the missing one.
I helped draw some more pictures, and louder cries came from the back of the room, then the front and a line of destruction ripped from table to table. I watched as three people walked from table to table, ripping people’s papers to shreds.
One group hid their drawing underneath their table but the young woman reached down, grabbed a section, and ripped a big piece out.
I turned away just in time to see a guy stop at our table, grab the center of our drawing, and pull it up. We fought to hold onto the picture, but he quickly crumbled it up and ripped it to pieces.
The cries from the audience grew louder, and the facilitator yelled, “Stop!”
The three disruptors in the crowd froze, but the facilitator went over to one table and pointed at the team. “Everyone, take a look at this group.”
I stood up so that I could see better and then realized what the team had done. The individuals at the table had locked arms and leaned in to create a human shield to protect their drawing.
I watched and realized that the strategy had never crossed my mind.
The facilitator turned around to face all of us and said, “There are more than a hundred of you and only three disruptors. What would have happened if each table would have locked arms and created a barrier to keep the disruptors out?” He let his words sink in and look at every one of us and added, “I have power. You have power. We have power.”
I woke up that day.
For a long time, I had looked at myself as being a victim. I grew up in an alcoholic family, we didn’t have a lot of money, and I had to overcome so much.
But that’s not the whole story. The victim and challenges I went through were part of a story that I told myself, and that limited me.
I have power.
I can write books, blog posts, create podcasts. I can share my story.
You have power.
You can define your worth and be your creator of whatever you imagine.
We have power.
This is the kicker. We are not alone. By building communities, we can connect and build a protective shield over what we know is precious.
Instead of letting others go through our lives and rip up our beautiful drawings, we can work together to protect and grow.
How?
Let’s build a community together.
Join the Let Go and Be Free private Facebook group, and together we’ll build a city, brick by brick. If you join, be share to share a story and say hello.
Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.