Trending: Leaders.

We don’t have one.

Remember when Occupy happened and then it was shut down because there were no leaders?

Remember when Obama’s term was over and the current president became president and we realized that everything we believed about our government was a lie and the system is broken? Do you know that on the highest level we have no leader? It’ almost unfathomable. Everyday. I can hardly believe it.

There must be a leader in the mix. Is she a woman? Is she black? Is she Hispanic? Is he Chinese? Does it not have a gender at all, or are they trans? Maybe, and hopefully, she is the Native American who grew up on a reservation in Montana. But this is all about power. Who is more powerful than the next? Power fills the shape that takes it. Like water, and the person who embodies it, has understood that power is time and opportunity. It is marked by the ability to identify a void and take one step. A leader is something quite intangible, but the person must have a certain strength of character that would naturally be respected. No matter what your title, if you are not respected, you are not a leader.

So here we are, in a system that we no longer believe in, without a spokesperson on our side. And there are a dizzying amount of identity trends that feel void, so many opportunities for leadership here that there is no focus. So if there were a leader, the leader would have to embody everyone, all the trends, at the same time. They would have to be so incredibly unique that we couldn’t even relate to them, they would have to be someone quite spiritual. We don’t want Oprah to be our president. We just don’t. Stop with the trends. Stop with the identity politics and infighting. The feverish tearing at one another. Stop with the useless demonizing of individuals. Stop with vapidly standing up for issues without listening to the person next to you. It’s like the Livestrong bracelets that everyone wore for a reason, but we forgot why, except this time everyone is wearing a different bracelet. And we've still forgotten why. Let me place this here:

In a way the leader would represent every person, but on a profound level the individual would need to be entirely different, a person raised by wolves. Or better yet, a wolf himself. But then again the wolf may get angry and eat everyone in the White House. Or got bored and escape the whole drama to return to its home in Canada because that’s where it is probably from.

There is a sense of hopelessness surrounding leadership right now. I have no patience for the shenanigans of the inept, because there is someone somewhere who will step forward, a Marat of sorts. I imagine we feel similar to how the French felt during their revolution. The contemporary American experience existing in a neo-roccoco world of excess and inequity that is so publicized that it means nothing: poverty, violence, cruelty IRL and online. Maybe the question is, how could we have let things get so off course? But, in truth it always was off course, now is the uprooting of the commercial fantasy.

I know we’re looking for unity. I know that many things in our culture feel wrong. And the issue is that they were never really right to begin with. This country was founded on the blood of others. But that doesn’t mean it can’t heal. Everyone feels a little too uncomfortable, the whole world feels strange and too close. There is no one to protect us. There is no one with words eloquent enough to calm us. Despite all of this, there remains the opportunity every morning to see how the sun would rise that day. To wear something that makes you happy. To make a decision.

For some reason we don't think we need leaders. Not to sound gauche, but we're all individual snowflakes, right? Yes. We are, but we are so obsessed with the self, self-identity, that we are forgetting to be kind to one another. Instead of acknowledging the differences, let us understand the similarities. We need to. In teaching you learn that there are no bad people, that there are bad behaviors. No matter what a child does, what a person does, I believe that there is goodness within them. I am certain, in the memory of Dr. King, that we can come together. May this revolution bring healing to the people you find hardest to love, so that we don’t have to submit to the same kind of revolution the French did. Leaders, listen, take a step.