Listen..and Make Some Noise

Each of us lives in two cities.

There’s the city that we breathe, sleep, feel, fight, and work in.

And there’s the city we communicate, socialize, learn, shop, and play in.

While our geographic cities may receive our physical selves, our laptops, mobile devices, and global networks receive our social, mental, and consumer energies.

It seems, as a generation of millenials, we have the unique opportunity to become better at merging our lives between these two realities. We need to become better listeners in our physical cities and better noisemakers in our global one.

All too often we reach for our iPod to drown out the noise of the culture outside our backdoor, unintentionally ignoring the artists, the musicians, the filmmakers, the poets, and the prophets saying something awakening and unique just steps away from our living room.  We’d rather grab the nearest Starbucks than a caffeine fix from our neighborhood coffee shop.  We’d rather chat with a picture and a profile than strike up a conversation with a three-dimensional stranger.

Conversely, we don’t own our second city the way we should. If we stopped and realized the unprecedented magnitude of communication accessible to us at this time in the history of the world, if we really took it in, saw it as a responsibility, a gift, a sign of hope…it would profoundly change the way we utilize the technology that’s become so common to us now.

With the ability to connect with anyone in the world with a wi-fi signal, injustices oceans away are now as close to us as our fingertips. The Haiti victim, the Ugandan child-soldier, the woman without water are now closer than our neighbors next door.  We now share a responsibility for our global community, a unique connection that should move us to breathe, sleep, feel, fight, and work together in it rather than passively observe.

I want to be better at living in both these cities.

I want to change the world, not buy a bumper sticker.

I want to be a better listener and a better noisemaker.

How about you?