Two years ago, Christmas day, I was almost killed. Since that time I’ve been searching for my purpose in life. I’ve made a recent discovery, one that’s been there all along, as to what my purpose is. I’m not going to come out and say it, not right this moment, but I will get to it. Let me tell a story. Earlier this year Twitter was ablaze with the Iranian Election Protests. Twitter avatars all over were turning green as fast as the eye could look and scroll the page. It was amazing. Part of the issue faced by supporters was the question of why. Why are you supporting them? Why should we care? A few weeks ago a friend of mine, also on Twitter, was booted off of another social networking site. Again I supported the user. My stand was simple, she was booted for no good reason. Again, I was asked, why are you supporting her? Why do you care? Why are you pushing to get an apology from the site, they wont do it. I have spent my life in service to others. From the time I graduated high school to present. I have been a stocker at the base commissary keeping the shelves full of Pillsbury and Kraft products. I was an avionics technician working on the radar systems housed in the F-4S Phantom II. I was a police officer in Texas for a municipality and a school district agency. I was a deputy sheriff for a populated and urban county in Colorado. I have also worked security, as I do now, at various points along the way. All of those jobs were in service to others, meaning I worked for them. I fulfilled an obligation or served a need. I didn’t run any company. Each job was based on the fact that: Something needed watching, or a freezer or chiller case needed more product in it, or bad guys needed to be caught, jailed, taken to court, or a radar set needed fixed so the mission could continue. Do you see where this is headed? I’ll sum it up in a short, concise slogan. A tag line of my Life Theme if you will. If not me then who? If I don’t take a stand, who will? If I don’t stand up for the rights of others, who will? Who will stand up for me when the time comes? Will you take the stand, fight the just fight? There in lays the problem. Collectively we look to each other to take the stand. We don’t want to be the one out there looking like a fool. What happens if we’re wrong? Why take a stand at all? Surely others have our best welfare at heart. Right? Its always in a companies or nations best interest to look after the lowest common denominator… its people. Surely that’s true. Well, its not. People like power. People, out of fear or ego, often refuse to admit mistakes. Companies, out of a lust for cash, make decisions that are not in the best interests of their product’s users. A company will refuse to admit mistakes out of the same fears a person would, fear and ego. Take the Iranian elections. I supported the student protesters because, as I see it, they needed to know that their story was getting out. They needed to know that people around the world supported their cause. Simple. Solidarity. In the case of Brightkite and my friend who was booted, I supported the user. It was unequivocal based on what I knew of her and the situation. By keeping up pressure her account was restored and she recieved an ‘off the record’ phone call to explain what had gone wrong. Again, solidarity. If we don’t take the little stands then we will surely not take the larger ones. In each case I could have said, ’screw that’ and ‘whats in it for me?’ The Iranian protest would have gone on without me. My friend may or may not have had her account restored. It, at the time, had no effect on me personally. Then I looked at everything my life has done. The jobs I’ve held and the underlying nature of the jobs. All are service. All are, in the end, helping someone else. We are not islands. We are global. What happens in other nations has a direct and immediate impact on our lives. What happens to others, just or unjust, can and will – as history has shown – happen to us. So, the question I had, answered itself. If not me, then who? If not here, where?
