what really, really challenges me and makes it hard for me to have hope is when i have to do things like explain to my children that sometimes it is the smarter choice to choose to concede on a dispute in order to protect yourself from more frustration and heartache. even when you believe that you are right. even when you make polite, eloquent and reasonable points regarding your position on the matter. why do i have to make my children understand that sometimes, it doesn’t matter how civil, how passionate or how persistent you are: sometimes, the entity with which you have a dispute will not even entertain the possibility of considering the validity of your arguments, because they have power over you and they are so sure that you can’t and don’t have the resources to take your case any higher than them that they don’t even need to pretend that they care.

how am i supposed to feel hope that one day i will not feel scared of the world so that i might fully participate in it, when it seems determined to demonstrate – over and over and over – on a personal, national and even global scale that it is fine with being arbitrarily unfair or injust?  when the people who are meant to work for us to improve people’s lives and world, are actually seeking to widen the spaces between us and magnify the differences so that diversity becomes adversity and is not a cause for celebration and learning but for fear and rejection.

how many times can you be knocked down before you can’t get up anymore?