Accountability

Tonight my mom and I went to an event to bring awareness to modern day slavery. There were speakers, musicians, and a small market selling fair trade items. You should probably check out Stop the Traffik: http://www.stopthetraffik.org
and Oasis: http://www.oasisusa.org/ for more information.

The entire event was moving and informational and thought provoking.

One of the musicians spoke at one point about how he came to be involved in activism toward informing the public about this tragic reality. He said something that really struck me. He mentioned how at the beginning he always turned away from the information. That although he knew a little of what was going on, he tried to avoid finding out too much. That might sound awful, but then he made this really good point: He shied away from the information because he knew that as soon as he heard it he would then be accountable for it.

Wow.

What an amazing point. And how convicting.

How many times have I heard something and then thought "gee, that's really bad, and it needs to be stopped," or "geez, that really needs to get done." But then instead of doing something about it, instead of jumping in with both feet I turn away and hope that someone else will just take care of it.

How many times have you?

Now, I know it's unrealistic to think that I can go ahead and jump into total activism on every single huge issue I hear about. I mean, how many are there? World Hunger, Modern Day Slavery, Cancer Awareness, etc, etc, etc, and so on and so on. You get the idea (I hope). No one can do it all. But there are small things that I can do. For each of the causes.

That statement also just hit me on a personal level too. There are things that have come to my attention in my own life that I need to acknowledge and attend too instead of walking away from or turning my back on. They aren't going to go away, and I am accountable to them.

He also made the point that these things will just keep tugging at you, or that they will keep coming back into your life over and over until you have no choice but to acknowledge them.

What have you walked away from or turned away from recently?

Let's hold ourselves accountable.