Response and protest help us come alive. It is that con­stant imbal­ance we find our­selves in with our envi­ron­ment. I would argue that response and protest must be mar­ried to aware­ness and humil­ity. In our being, doing, and relat­ing, as we respond and protest, we must be fully aware and will­ingly hum­ble. With­out this, response and protest become a dis­course in apa­thy and arro­gance. There are too many peo­ple who respond and protest in a way that shows how apa­thetic they are, and how arro­gant they are.

To be fully aware requires us to throw our­selves into life. It requires of us a focus on our­selves, those imme­di­ately around us, those we influ­ence, and the world that we find our­selves in. It requires of us to process the mean­ing of the past and the pur­pose of the future. There is a demand upon us in aware­ness that takes us from our self-absorption to a holis­tic self. Aware­ness may mean we are caught off guard by the cir­cum­stances of life, but it also means that we never ignore what life what brings our way. Aware­ness causes us to watch our steps, to be on our toes if you will, and to always be in step with the fluc­tu­a­tions of the cir­cum­stances of life.

Humil­ity requires us to under­stand who we truly are. We are called to move beyond the vain imag­i­na­tions that tempt us to lie to our­selves. Humil­ity moves us to a place of hon­esty. We look at our­selves not through our masks and false selves. Humil­ity allows us to be approach­able and teach­able in all that we do. Humil­ity says we have not arrived, and that we are yet mould­able. Humil­ity allows us to never stop learn­ing, and to always ignore the false sense of mas­tery of life.