Heretic and Innovator

I haven’t blogged in several weeks, which is most likely because of the number of transitions going on in my life. With my involvement with NFTY changing and eventually dispersing, I have had to come up with new ideas for what my Jewish and secular leadership is going to look like in the coming years.

Part of this involved reading and writing an incredible amount. The topics dealt with a little bit of spirituality, a little bit of philosophy, and a little bit of leadership self-help material. Overall, I began writing my own ideas down, and creating a new sense of what it means to lead, what it means to follow, and what it means to make a difference in the world.

In my Jewish History class, I came to an interesting realization: most of the people we were studying created their greatest works or contributions to society in the last half of their lives. Whatever the reason for our studying them, it had something to do with what they did at the end, rather than at the beginning. I think this was startling because I would most definitely prefer to be in the first half of my life, and by a wide margin. That being said, I refuse to believe that everything I do from this point until I’m a “mature adult with life experience” will but useless.

I am calling for more action and seriousness put toward people of younger ages. Better yet, I’m calling for the elimination of age from discussions regarding leadership. It shouldn’t really matter how old someone is in terms of their ability to lead, inspire, or think. Whether it be direct campaigns for social justice, works of literary brilliance or anything else for that matter, age should not be anything short of a statistic.

Another element of my gleanings has to do with the boxes we create to limit our creativity. This is, in short, the only way that we are able to process our thinking, because without some form of order, we would have very little ability to focus. That being said, we are cramping our own style. The ones that we call heretics shouldn’t be seen as crazy. When the heretic becomes the innovator, we know that we are creating an environment that is open and willing to change with the times.

Changing the culture of an environment is the only way to change how things are done. Without some form of shift, there is no way that we can actually change the end result, only the way that we get there. Being willing to change the culture of your surroundings, though, requires not only the vision to make it happen, but also the intentionality associated with making a decision. You can’t change a cultural mindset by accident. You have to do it with a purpose, which necessitates leadership, bravery, and innovation.

I don’t know what my life is going to look like a year from now, but I refuse to let my surroundings continue to be imperfect if I have the means to do something about it. I am willing to sound like a heretic for the time being, if that means that with it will come a cultural shift and, one day, the acceptance of change as not a scary negative, but rather a necessary positive.