httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_YOG3jMlV4

This is a New Year and being the black Christian feminist/womanist perennial thinker that I am, I want my first blog in the New Year to be about a sustainable hope for a better world. The video above is captivating. And, perhaps, captivating does not capture the feeling of unfettered hope one receives from watching the video. Rarely, do I post a YouTube video clip as my featured blog. Of course, this does not count my addiction to all things Awkward Black Girl web series video clips. However, there are times when I come across a YouTube clip that literally steals my breath and I must share.

Though the focus of the Black Youth Project is on all things related to empowering black youth and black communities, I think that this mission in part is creating a world of hope for people and communities who are caught at the “intersections” of multiple systems of oppression. Therefore, the title of the video above is “A Message of Hope.” It talks about how we as lovers of life and others can change the world by first beginning with ourselves. We can change the world by examining how we treat others and ourselves. Often, when we hate, love, and fight others we hate things within ourselves, love things within ourselves, and fight things within ourselves. I know this to be a truism for my own life. I have written about such things before on this blog. Just click on the links below.

Well, the last blog where I featured a simply moving video as the entire blog, holding constant my many video posts about Awkward Black Girl, was the Vertus Hardiman blog. This blog has received 400 likes because the video was that moving and it touched our hearts in a way that “softened us.” We became soft as we listened to an 80-year-old black man tell us how he was a victim of radiation when he was little black boy and how the radiation created a hole in his head. And for the last 70 years, he wore a hat to hide it. To say the least, the video softened my heart.

I think from now on till the end of the year every other month, I am going to search the internet for videos that will make our flesh, blood, heart, and mind soft. I truly believe as I wrote last week that we were never meant to be brick-like in our beliefs, ideologies, and everyday lived experiences. We are supposed to be soft enough to change and to flow with change. With all this being said, I wish you all a hopeful New Year.