“It starts with us.”

Tonight I had the opportunity to hear Cory Booker (the Mayor of Newark, NJ if you didn’t know) speak at B-W. As a recent follower of Mayor Booker on Twitter, I was really looking forward to hearing what he had to share with our campus community.  I arrived with some of the grad assistants in my office as well as a few students. We were told to arrive early, so we arrived shortly after 7pm (for an 8pm start time).

Right before Cory spoke, I got a DM from him saying that he was glad we were there and he’d be on stage soon. I was pumped. I know some of my Twitter followers may have wanted some “real time tweets”, and I had intended to do so, except the engagement during that time was too great to tweet about in the moment.

Cory’s keynote address was titled “Change the World with your Bare Hands.” And indeed I felt changed at the end. I felt inspired and motivated beyond what I could have possibly anticipated. There was even a moment during his concluding story, that I felt myself begin to tear up. Hearing stories of people committed – ACTIVELY committed – to change is a moving and powerful thing. It was part of multiple programs B-W was hosting in honor of our MLK week.

I tried to jot down a few things as I listened. I had my little notebook in my lap and wanted to be able to sit and reflect upon those sporadic notes scribbled on the paper. So in looking at them, here are a few of the main things I walked away with this evening.

1. Cory initially spoke of his upbringing and the ideas his parents really tried to instill in him and his brother. He expressed the importance of knowing your history and knowing where you come from. He stated that he learned “we drink deeply from the wells of liberty and freedom that we did not dig.” That one statement made me think more about history than I ever had in my life. It gave me a new sense of appreciation for those who have come before me.

2. He spoke a lot about change (obviously by the title of the keynote), but it was about how we affect change. As in the quoted text I used for the title of this post, Cory said “It doesn’t start with someone else. It starts with us.”

3. He spoke about drama and how we create our own drama. Our outlook on the world is really the thing we need to look at. Cory said “The world you see outside of you is the world you see inside of you.” How many times are we so caught up in our own problems and drama internally that we put that in our external world as well. If we are negative on the inside we will see more negative on the outside. We should instead look at the world with hope.

4. I think my favorite quote from Cory tonight was “We are here because of the abnormal people who loved.” And I find that to be so incredibly true. We are here because there were people out there making change. The change makers of the world are the ones that some people may call crazy. They are looked at as weird or nonsensical. They are the “abnormal” people of the world. But they take the risks. They commit to change. And they do that with love and hope. So why can’t we?

Tonight was, for me, a reconnect with ideas of hope and love. A recommitment to making change happen. A commitment to my community. As an educator, I have the ability to change the lives of the students around me.  Student Affairs is a world filled with abnormal people who love. So consider that as you are doing your daily tasks. Of course there are things that are frustrating, but how do we approach those frustrations. Don’t internalize the negative only to have that become externalized. Instead strive to look at each task with love and purpose. See it as creating more hope for the future. As Cory emphasized – Do Something. And do it with love.