Inspiration

I’ve been craving Hamilton. Weird, right? Craving a musical. I watched the film version a couple of years ago and fell in love. I cringed at the thought of spending two-plus hours in front of a screen watching something I’ve already seen but this past weekend, while driving back to Live Oak from Miami, I listened to the soundtrack. I listened, I laughed, I cried, and I was in awe.

I won’t pretend to know why Lin-Manuel Miranda decided to write that story. Maybe he wanted to share or defend his position on immigration. Maybe he felt identified with a great man that wasn’t originally from where he did his best work. Maybe he just wanted to retell a story he once read, and thought was cool. But I’ll tell you one thing he accomplished with his brilliance. He inspired me.

I was washing my hands at a shell station off the side of the road, but I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even thinking about getting back on the road. I was thinking about my own immigration story, why I became a lawyer, the copy of the Constitution I keep in my bedroom, how passionate I often get, how few close friends really know every facet of me and my numerous friends with faiths, passions, and opinions different than my own. I was thinking about how I’m 35 and only recently started to learn how to really “talk less and smile more,” and how I’m convinced that it’s a skill I want to nurture but not one that I will allow to replace my habit of thinking through things and letting my opinion on those things be known.

See, I’m not a “prepper,” but I’ve felt in my bones, for a long time, that things are changing. I’m a product of public schools that I can be proud of, but I feel like I’m “running out of time,” so I can’t trust my children to public (or private) school because I need to take all the minutes I know they’ll have to spend in line, or sitting through the morning announcements, and I must help them use them, wisely, to learn things we might accidentally skip past, or learn too late, otherwise. I have to teach them, and myself, that success can look different in each moment and, even more importantly, that we have to keep our eyes, hearts, and minds open to recognize just what hard work is needed for success at this moment.

I believe God gave my parents the strength to put their two young children on a raft so we could be free.

Photo Credit: Brothers to the Rescue

Yes, but...free for what? From what? From whom? For who? I don’t know when it will finally happen, but each day, I think, or hope, I come closer to having that plan revealed.

In the meantime, this weekend showed us that we are doing well by our children!

Our son, merely six years old, showed his capacity for understanding what others want from him, empathizing, holding his ground and most importantly, compromise. He made it respectfully clear to those with the power to control him what he wanted, why he wanted it, and that he understood the ultimate authority on the topic at hand.

Photo credit: A grandparent

He did this on his own. We were not with him in those moments. I have been proud of my son many times in his short life, but I have never been this proud. Of him and us.

If all we do in this life is raise conscientious, principled and articulate children to participate in whatever is to come next in this world, that “would be enough.”

And if I may say so myself, thank you, God and Amen!