I’ve got a feeling in me that I want to communicate but I fear I’ll fail. I’ll try anyway.
I was watching some of Tupac’s music videos and listening to his powerful lyrics. His words express pain and frustration at living in a society that doesn’t care about him or people like him. Lyrics like “instead of a war on poverty, they’ve got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”
I believe that Tupac is still remembered today and is considered one of the best rappers ever because he did things differently. He used lyrics to tell a story rather than only rap about girls and guns (although he did that some too.) Those songs – those beats and those lyrics – stir something inside me that wants to make the world different, better.
If you want to drive change you must do it by being different. Even that alone isn’t enough, you also need relentless effort.
But doing things the same way you always have or the same ways that the people in power do can only reinforce the current system. It will help to sustain the status quo and rather than tearing down the system you detest you will build it up.
It seems too simple. The only way to change things is to be different.