A Climate of Change

I had an hour between sessions at the Georgia Bike Summit and I hopped on my bike and zipped to the supermarket (aware of my privilege to have one so close by and to be able to get to it safely).

I had just texted my older daughter to see how the wildfires were going and if she was impacted by the earthquake. I reached out to others to find out if the floods were affecting them, and was still a bit in shock that a tree that fell and crushed a car in my city missed me by probably five minutes the previous morning.

And then there was the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the politics that have ripped families across the USA apart for years now; and the fact that during the biggest bike boom since the 1970s, all of 40 people were attending this statewide bike summit (even though it was online, free, and truly wonderful in the diversity of topics and people presenting).

I had so, so many thoughts while unlocking my bike there by the white brick wall. So much intersectionality of the issues in which I’ve been intimately involved since 9/11, and about which I continue to try to learn. So much urgency for change then and every single day of every single year since then.

And yet, here we are. Trying to still believe we can make a difference. That we matter. That change is possible. That there is more good than bad. That good will somehow prevail.

And that one small person (such as me, such as you) taking one small action can have a stone-in-the-pond ripple effect, rather than simply hitting yet another brick wall.