Robert Egger´s Piece of Mind

I really enjoy the countless opportunities I am afforded to meet with colleagues. I dig each and every gig I get…but if ANY stand out, it’s the ones that put me in front of young nonprofit leaders, or men and women who are in college, but who have already made up their mind about their future—they want to make CHANGE.

As an older dude, with tons of time and tenacious accomplishments under my belt, I am asked, more than any other thing, for advice on how to begin to journey-take up the standard-belly up the bar in order to be part of making the world better, stronger, more level and just. I treat it as a real honor when asked, as it suggests that folks  think I’ve got an angle I play…a secret tactic I employ.

I do. I listen.

As such, here’s the VERY first thing I always suggest—un-the-fuck-plug.

I take the subway to work all the time. I travel almost weekly, and then I take purposeful walks thru every city I visit. Whenever and wherever I am out, mixing it up and thinking/plotting/planning…I rely on my ears, my eyes, my nose and my brain to explore every corner of every communities where I’m at—including DC, where I have lived for over 40 years.

I listen. I hear. I probe with my ears. I hear language, words, inflexions, fears, challenges, ideas….and I process them to help me understand the mood of the city—the zeitgeist of the day, in order to better develop and then forward ideas.

Now, as many of you know…I grew up in nightclubs. My first love was for music (the first language) and its ability to transcend age, race, class and countless other barriers. I believe in its transformative powers. I still listen to Minor Threat just about every morning, and groove to Chuck Brown most nights….but I also think music has a time and place.

Too often, I see buses, subways and streets FULL of people all tuned out. Hear me on this—more often than not, those little white chords attached to those groovy little McMP3/McIpods are designed to shut you UP, zone you OUT and tell you, with a glorious beat, to buy more shit that YOU DO NOT NEED.

So…seriously….plug into your community. Listen to it. Learn its cadence. Feel its rhythm. Roll to its groove. Only when you KNOW your community will you truly be able to forward new ideas that people will stand behind.

As my friend Rev. Beecher Hicks says—“If you’re leading, but nobody is following, then you are just taking a walk.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.