There is a Choice We Are Making: Let’s Make it a Better Day

Before finishing this post, I revisited “We Are the World,” the 1985 recording that brought together some of the most recognizable voices in America. Forty years later, its message remains as relevant as ever.https://youtu.be/182f6dTagkU?si=g2MxzkwdVCVpRv5S

I have reached that ‘certain age.’ I now ask myself what was SO important in younger years to go to the wall over? What was gained and what was lost?

I think of unresolved family issues that have stretched over years. I think of divisions in our community that seem to pass from one generation to the next. I think of opportunities missed because we were more determined to win an argument than solve a problem.

And I find myself returning to a seminal question: How important is it to be right?

Because being right can be expensive. It can cost relationships. It can cost trust. It can cost progress. It can cost a city’s future.

Rocky Mount faces real challenges. We need jobs. We need leadership. We need vision. Most of all we need one another. Yet too often we spend our energy dividing ourselves into camps and categories, firing accusations back and forth like that yellow tennis ball back and forth crossing the net.

What if we chose something different?

What if we saw ourselves as neighbors first? What if we remembered that the future belongs to all of us, not just the people who agree with us? What if we spent less time proving our opponents wrong and more time building something right together?

There is a choice we are making every day in Rocky Mount. We can continue paying the high price of division or we can choose cooperation, grace, and common purpose.

Forty years after We Are the World, its message still feels timely. We are connected whether we acknowledge it or not. The choice has always been the same: to retreat into our differences or to recognize that our futures rise and fall together.

At this stage of my life that choice seems clearer than ever.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. – Helen Keller