If The Time Is Not Ripe, We Have To Ripen The Time

I like obituaries, and I tend to have a few of them tacked to a bulletin board above my desk--sometimes from someone I've known, or a writer or musician that I particularly liked, but mostly they are people who have lead particularly inspiring lives.  Obituaries are a reminder that our time here is finite, and that we should make the most of it.

Dorothy Height passed away this week, after a long life spent fighting injustice and discrimination.  She was one of the leaders of the civil rights movement in this country, serving as President of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957 to 1997.  If her name is not as familiar as those of her male collaborators--Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Roy Wilkins--that is only a measure of how much further we still need to go as a society to remedy gender discrimination.

But, whatever the cause, one of her favorite sayings is worth repeating and remembering: "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time."  I like this because it embodies two important truths about political activism: 1)There is a right time and a wrong time for particular challenge, and we have to be informed and aware in our work, but 2)You don't sit get to sit around when it is the wrong time and wait for it to be the right time--you work to make it the right time.

I hope I never forget it--she clearly didn't.