You’ve got ideas. Get involved.
-- Anonymous

Here it is, your opportunity to get involved. This is your chance to put into practice the ideas and suggestions you’ve imagined, written down, and talked about. This is the time help, create, advance, and improve that which you’ve been worried about, complaining about, and demanding. This, right here today, is your chance.

It’s your chance to vote for the candidate that most inspires you and/or the issues that most affect you, to make your voice heard and your presence known. This is your opening to be a politically active member of a democratic society. If you’re not a registered voter, this is the time to become one. If you’re really committed to affecting the political process, casting your vote when it’s time will prove that deed. Right now is your chance.

If you’ve complained long enough about the kids aimlessly walking and playing in the street, now’s your chance to provide some answers to those pointless strolls and messing around. Now’s your chance to create options and opportunities for the kids, be they simple ideas like organizing a league of kickball players, or more complex ones like training them to be competent members and captains of the neighborhood watch organization. Don’t have a neighborhood watch? Now’s the time for you, and the meandering kids, to start one.

If you’ve lamented time and time again that your neighborhood is going to pot, this is the moment for you to move to turn it around. This is the time for you to organize like-minded neighbors and take a walk through your neighborhood, arming yourselves with garbage bags for collecting random trash on the streets, flowers seeds and bulbs for planting, smiles and encouraging words for greeting skeptical neighbors, and fortitude that exudes, as Sojourner Truth believed, what was once upside down can be turned right side up again. Now is that time.

If you’ve droned on and on about how the kids, their families, and our communities are falling behind, this is your opportunity to step up to bring them up. Wherever your strengths lie, whatever your passions are, right now is the time for you to show up and dig your feet, hands, and heart in. Whether it’s children in schools who need a reading or math buddy; a family that needs help managing their money or home; or a community that needs a breath of empowerment, you are the person to provide any or all of that. Now is the time to get involved.

If you have an idea about how to make the thing better, for goodness sake, don’t just tell somebody about it – you do it. If you want to affect change, get involved, be engaged, and work to change it, whatever it is. You make the change you want to see happen. You’ve got ideas and plans, you be the one to exact them. It’s your turn, your time, and your responsibility to get involved.
Sadiqqa © 2008