I’m a passionate person. I care deeply about the world we live in and what happens within it.
However, I often find that my passion doesn’t have a purpose. I’ll watch news stories about unarmed black men being shot in their own home, or the famine in Yemen and my heart will physically ache. I feel despair as the shopping list of injustices to fight and wrongs to right grows ever longer in my head. I will cry out that things need to change, donate some money to All Out or Avaaz and then go back to my daily life. The problem I have is twofold:
- I so badly want the whole world to be fixed that I struggle to break that down and move the dial on smaller, more “manageable” topics.
- I don’t feel like I have enough time to give. I always equate activism with an all or nothing mentality: I have to quit my job and spend my days protesting/getting arrested to be of any use in the battle for peace.
And so for years I have gone round in circles, watching almost enviously as brilliant young black women like Chidera Eggerue and Munroe Bergdorf find their space and use their voices to affect real change.
In my struggle to find purpose, I’ve been praying to God to help me understand where he wants me to go. I’ve prayed for guidance and then sat and waited, as if some miraculous text would come through outlining my ultimate purpose in the world and every step to take to achieve it.
This isn’t the right approach. When I look back and examine the times God has ordered my steps in the past, He hasn’t planted instructions into my head. Instead, He has validated my choices – given me peace when I was on the right path and feelings of unease / uncertainty when I wasn’t.
So, I can no longer wait and expect someone else to do all the work for me! It looks like I have to get started! Over the next year, I will choose causes that I am passionate about and spend a month being proactive in my activism: getting involved in charities, talking to active voices in the space, working to find my passion and purpose.
The first step is to try and distil the tangle of thoughts and emotions in my head into something tangible.
Join me as I start this journey and let’s hold each other accountable as we look to make the world a better place.
God Bless
Leesha x
Girl Unleeshed 