I have an old picture of myself from grade school that I have kept all of these years. It’s a little blurry but in it, you can see that I am wearing an Indian costume. My arms are crossed defiantly over my chest and my bangs are crooked but it is one of my all-time favorite photos. It makes me smile every time I see it.
It was taken several weeks before Thanksgiving in my third-grade classroom when we made costumes for the holiday. Pilgrim costumes for the girls and Indian costumes for the boys. It was a fun and creative idea for a group of kids unless you just happened to be the girl that wanted to be an Indian instead of a Pilgrim.
You see, the Indian costumes were cut out of a large roll of brown paper and could be decorated with all sorts of colored markers, Indian symbols and fringe cut along the bottom. The pilgrim costumes were black and white and consisted of aprons and hats. Obviously the Indian costumes were much more creative than the Pilgrim costumes and I couldn’t understand why each person wasn’t allowed to choose what they wanted to be. I remember that it took a fair amount of coaxing to get my teacher to allow me to be an Indian but after some persistence, I finally got my way.
I have been telling that story ever since. Not because it is a riveting story. Not because it is even all that interesting either. I tell it for one simple reason. It reminds me that I don’t always have to go with the flow. That sometimes it’s good to cause a disruption.
Sometimes we need to disrupt our standard way of thinking. We need to be willing to do something we have never done before. Say something we have never said before. So that we can be the people we have always wanted to be.
We have to be willing to run, leap and soar even knowing there is the possibility that we might fall.
Sometimes we need to ask ourselves the questions that make us take a look at our life and then disrupt it if necessary. That disruption might just cause you to become bold and audacious. It might cause you to affect other people. And if that happens, people will take notice of you and they will be inspired by you.
Often times we look for others to inspire us but maybe we are here to be the inspiration. Maybe the world is waiting on us to inspire them by the way we rise above our own circumstances and the way we show up every day.
Maybe you are the change that the world is waiting for.
