My version of the dream

Now I'm embarrassed. I posted something here only to discover shortly thereafter that I had posted almost exactly the same thing, drawn from the same source, just three months ago. So instead of just saying the same thing over again, I have dumped the post and instead will just link you to that earlier one, where I said that

quoting yet another thing I wrote a long time ago and quoting as accurately as I can from memory, "our strongest, surest beliefs are those we don't even know we have until we find them within us." That is, our deepest, most abiding beliefs and commitments are not born consciously of careful philosophical argumentation and reasoned analysis but grow naturally from our root moral and ethical convictions. That argumentation, those analyses, can give form to those convictions, they can provide them with substance and weight, but they do not drive them - rather, they are driven by them.

So despite my tendency to intellectualization, to try to argue my points rationally with facts and figures and references, still it's important - for me if not for my listeners - to drop away on occasion from "here's the data, here's the logic, here's the conclusion" to the fundamental, baseline, radical place where I can say, simply, I believe.

I believe that life is our highest good and advancing life is our highest ideal. I believe....

You can read the rest there.

Going back to "I believe" is a way for me to center, to, if you will, rediscover my moral roots, something I need to do right now. In that same linked post I made mention of a speech I gave some years ago in which I pledged to never give up on the dream of true justice. Truth be told, I have come close to breaking that pledge a couple of times. But as MLK said,

Keep moving! If you can't fly, run! If you can't run, walk! If you can't walk, crawl! But by all means, keep moving.

I can only promise to do my best. As little as that is and it is surely not above a crawl. But as I said myself, and as I know on my better days, little may be little, but it is not nothing.