Progress takes time, but time is on our side
A core strength of people who champion causes is the willingness to play the long game, working patiently through the long, slow slog of progress.
When we realize that things take time… even a really long time… it frees us up to just focus on the call to champion a cause that comes to us. If we answer our call, we can trust that others will answer theirs. Our long slow slogs… cause after cause... are the mere moments within the longest slow slog of them all… the cause of humanity's redemption, which has already taken millennia and still stretches out before us to the horizon.
I like to read from the Lives of the Saints. My favorite parts are not so much the miracles, but seeing the ordinary trials of their lives and the way they worked through them. We moderns can get so caught up in our lives, like our lives are more valuable than those who lived before us or who'll live after us, just because we're living our mortal lives now and they aren't. When I read about the saints across millennia, I realize that they stared down many of the same things we have to face today.
They lived, loved and lost. They got taken advantage of. They let themselves and others down. They failed. They got hurt. They broke hearts and had theirs broken. They had to look within and to the plane above ours to find the strength and temerity to make the best of it. And they championed causes big and small… fighting through blocks, using things readily available, working patiently with allies and the opposition. When I read these stories, I see my solidarity to those people from the past, and I see my struggles and successes in a broader context. Our journey is tied to their journey as part of the human journey. They put points on the board while there was still time on their mortal clocks.
Now we're in the game doing the same.
When we register that sixth foul and have to come out of the game (too much NBA, y'all!), Coach will sub someone in for us. We'll scream, "Bullshit call!" as our exhausted bodies lumber to the bench. The rookie who's eager to show what he's got will swat us on the butt and say, "Way to give it all you had, vet!" They will rush into the fray with fresh legs and give it all they've got, too.
The wins pile up, sometimes by the hardest, but the win column grows, and the moral arc bends a little more toward justice. It's not a matter of if we'll prevail but when. Goodness will infallibly continue to win out because people are, at their core, good. Champions act expecting it to materialize. Time and time again it does, and that goodness stretches to the horizon, too. For Champions, it serves as an inexhaustible fuel of our collective progress. What was once thought impossible is possible. Very possible. Inevitable.
