Hope is Not a Plan. It is a Source of Power

By Fred Miller, The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. Someone handcuffs you and puts their knee on your throat and you die.   Someone…  …thinks your apartment is their apartment and kills you. …is driving their car and is stopped and killed. …is playing with a toy gun and is killed. …is jogging in the middle of the street unarmed and is killed.   I am so tired. When I am tired… When I have said the same statement to another client that I have said hundreds of times in my 48 years of doing this work… When I miss my family and friends…    When I wonder: Does it really matter? Do I really matter? Does anyone really care?    When I look at TV and see the underbelly of the United States and other places around the world… When I feel like an old black man trying to swim up Niagara Falls… When I just feel like an old man…   When I think I can’t take another step… I think of YOU.    I think of all the people Judith and I have met and worked with through the years. People who care, who want to make a difference, who are making a difference!    And that thought…that very thought…that one thought gives me… Strength Courage A Vision A feeling of love   YOU give me HOPE… Enough hope to take another step, to repeat words I have said a thousand times. Hope is powerful. It moves my internal mountains!   I recently heard Fareed Zakaria, on his TV show GPS, read the following quote from the book American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony by Samuel P. Huntington:   “Critics say America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals.  They are wrong. America is not a lie. It is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment because it is also a HOPE!”   HOPE is not a plan, it is a source of POWER And YOU are a source of hope. Knowing you, and the hundreds of other people reading this email, and the tens of thousands we have had the privilege of interacting with in our client-organizations, there is power AND hope.   Not small cross-your-fingers hope, but BIG HOPE. A hope that says, “We can be better tomorrow than we are today. We can do this!”   It is a hope that reminds me of all the police officers I have met who want justice and a better society as much and maybe more than I do!    It reminds me of the corporate leaders, CEOs, and people at all levels in organizations who have a passion for justice, equality, diversity and inclusion, and who live every day in a manner that moves us closer to the reality we desire.   Their numbers are large. Their numbers are larger in so many ways than any of the demonstrations we have witnessed on TV. All these people we know and all those people neither of us know but who want a better world for ALL… they so outnumber the people who don’t want that world! They are a source of hope. And hope is a source of power.    WE CAN DO THIS! You and I and our colleagues have been working, some of us for decades, to create a better world. With hope and power, we will, collectively, create a better world for ALL.   Hope is Power!   It might sound foolish to say that during these times. But I, Frederick A. Miller, believe that in every cell in my body!    No one said it would be easy!   I am proud to know you and to know our shoulders are next to each other as we move forward.   THANK YOU!