Privilege

In college I attended a leadership retreat that was focused on helping participants understand how they could have a positive impact on the world. After 6 days of isolation in the mountains with 50 other students I walked away thinking that it was fun, but really this was a bunch of kumbaya garbage that I was never going to use anyways.

Imagine my shock when I came across a post a few weeks ago that reminded me of the conference and the realization that somehow I was actually still using towards the vision I created during the conference to drive my volunteerism and passions.

Crap, apparently that Kumbaya stuff works.

I saw this amazing video on Privilege last night, another reminder of some of the activities we did during Leadershape, and I kinda wish we had done this instead of the activity we did do. I won’t give away the actual activity from Leadershape, because I think my group missed the point and the message was lost on us, but when we returned back to the large group, people where screaming and yelling about the circumstances of the activity and how the world isn’t fair.

I think a more reflective, realistic take like the one in the video probably would have been a better way to encourage us to think about the types of privilege we as a group where provided with, and how we could help promote a community of equal opportunity no matter our background circumstances.

After all even having the experience of the conference demonstrated that we were given privileges not afforded to everyone. We were in college, we were a group of people who could take a week without working and be ok, we were all student leaders, etc.

Take a look at the video, and let me know what you think in the comments. Being born into privilege isn’t something we have control over, and the privileges we are given as a result of our lifestyles don’t or can’t be given to everyone, because not everyone can make the same decisions and if they could, is that a world we want to live in?

So what can we do about it?

I think we need to be conscious and grateful for the experiences we have, but work towards breaking down the barriers and creating a community that is inclusive and caring regardless of the circumstances each person was handed. I don’t know if thats possible, or realistic, but I think we have to start somewhere.