Lessons in poverty: more on progress
I’m in NYC now, yesterday I had a chance to go back to my old neighborhood. I went to the very same McDonalds my mother took me to when I was 6 or 7 years old. It hadn’t changed at all. Sure the paint and decorations were new but the tables and chairs were firmly planted just as I remembered them as a small child. I sat at the same table. It felt like I traveled back into time.
I walked around my old street their were plenty of new buildings but when I went to the local grocery store I was surprised that it hadn’t changed at all. It still smelled the same. The bread and snacks were still in the same places. They even sold the very same products. I saw many of the same people that walked the neighborhood when I was young. They hadn’t changed either.
While the neighborhood itself had made some progress, plenty of new buildings and new families there was still a separate track of people and things who had not. I don’t think they want to. For many of them the neighborhood is their home and would always be home and no one wants things to change at home.
How do you make progress when you are surrounded by people who have no interest in change?
You leave.
The only way to notice how little progress everyone is making is to leave. You need to work outside of the old system. You can not change from within it. Once you decide you want to move forward you need to escape the old and experience the new. When you return you will have the same feeling I did, as though you had traveled back in time to a place where nothing has changed. Because nothing will have.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I agree with you completely. Luckily I was given the opportunity to attend college 500 miles away from my neighborhood. I no longer reside there, but I still feel like I have a personal stake in the neighborhood’s well being. And with that, comes obligation to inspire the children there to do better, and expect better, because if left, never turned back, then what will change? And if I do nothing to change my own neighborhood, then who will?
September 28th, 2007 at 1:33 am
“How do you make progress when you are surrounded by people who have no interest in change?
You leave.”
The thing I always new somewhere inside me but couldn’t realize it. Thank You! Now everything became much clearer to me
September 28th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Changing is necessary to get success, but isn’t it a nice thing that you can still smell your childhood in your hometown?
I gotta change myself first though.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:55 am
At times it is often best to extract yourself from a failing situation, but I do believe it is therapeutic to return to the essence. That is your Bed-Stuy roots. Never forget to reach down and pull up.. There are still diamonds waiting to be unearthed. Methinks that is very important..
September 30th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
[...] This is a tough thing to do, I know. How do you make progress when you are surrounded by people who have no interest in change? [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I’m not entirely sure how I came across your website but I wanted to convey how interesting your blogs are.
“The only way to notice how little progress everyone is making is to leave” - this phrase basically sums up how I feel but have never actually articulated this feeling. I often leave my home town (London) only to return several months/years later and discover that everyone is in the same place, the same clothes and worse, the same mentality.
Keep the blog up!