The world is full of actors and analysts.
I am an analyst.
I like to understand things. I think I really need to understand things. Which requires observation. Which I do best when I’m a little detached from what’s going on. So I sit on the sidelines, away from the action. By choice. It’s where I can observe and analyze. And understand.
Actors are in the middle of everything. They make decisions quickly, they relish the interactions, they’re always in motion. They make life fun, and make it frustrating, depending on which actions they take. But they take action.
Analysts are important. We help our communities understand what’s happening and why. Our work informs actions. We are the experts. We study, we learn, we apply our knowledge, and we explain how things work, why things happen, what we can and can’t do about things we want to change. Not everyone listens, of course, but we’re still important.
Actors are also important. We need people who will commit themselves – and ourselves – to action. They move the ball forward. They create the changes we see in our communities. They are the people in the ring. They strive, usually to make things better for us all. We don’t always agree with what they do, but we still need people to do things.
We have another group in our communities as well, however. These people aren’t particularly productive. They don’t add much of anything at all.
Spectators.
They don’t extend themselves to understand. They don’t take action to change their communities. Or themselves. They take what they earn, but they don’t give back to the broader world around them.
We have far too many spectators. People who do their work, come home to watch television, eat with their family, then do the same thing again the next day. They aren’t thinking about why the world is the way it is and how it might be better. And they aren’t committing themselves to action on behalf of others either. They aren’t extending themselves for others beyond their circle of friends and family, and that lack of effort isn’t helping – and when we have a community that is hostile to some of its members, it might actually be hurting – other people.
I’m not saying they are bad people. I do believe that the sum of each of our individual failings is the same. Our individual lots are not the issue here.
I am saying that if they engaged, it would help lighten the load that many of the other members of our community have to carry. Our collective lot is the issue. I believe that if a fellow person is diminished, then we are not optimizing our collective well-being. Is it up to that individual to make the effort to not be diminished? Yes. And it is also up to each of us in our community to make the effort so that no one in our community is diminished.
I believe we are, in part, our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper. We may not have the largest part to play in his or her individual success, but we still have a part in it.
So let’s play that part. Analyst or actor, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t be a spectator.