by Joan Brasher

I’m a little bit unsettled by this new year we’ve just rung in, being an odd number and all.

Twenty-eleven. Just hearing it in my head makes me feel off-balanced and unfinished, like you do when a song ends on a dissonant chord.

Generally speaking, I prefer even numbers any time I can get them. Whether it’s a raffle ticket, a hotel room key or the lucky numbers inscribed on the back of my fortune-cookie fortune, I feel more at peace when things appear to come out even.

But real life doesn’t always end up that way, no matter how nice it would be to think so.

I was reminded of this as I researched civil rights activist and this year’s keynote speaker for Vanderbilt’s Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Series Julian Bond (“Continuing the Fight,” page 6). Here is a man who has devoted most of his life to advocating for equality. Bond was a student and friend of Dr. King and a proponent of nonviolent protest who led marches and sit-ins. He formed influential, groundbreaking organizations that changed the landscape of popular thought and influenced legislation on racial equality in America. The Civil Rights Movement, of which he was a part, changed history, and he will forever be remembered for helping make America less encumbered by the blight of racism.

If any man should be at peace with his life’s accomplishments, one would think it would be Julian Bond. But in an interview with CBSNews.com, he said:

“The (Civil Rights) Movement’s failure – and it is immense – is its failure to convince our fellow Americans that racial discrimination remains a severe problem today. A majority of white Americans today, by every poll, believe black and white Americans have achieved equal status in the country – in fact, many believe equality was achieved by the time Martin Luther King died – and that complaints about equality are from those who are just ingrates or discontents who wouldn’t be satisfied with anything.”

So much has changed to right the wrongs of the past in America, thanks to Julian Bond’s efforts and those with whom he labored. Yet this great man goes to bed each night and wakes up each day with a nagging feeling of unrest: Even in 2011, our work isn’t done yet. We’ve made steps toward equality, but things aren’t truly even.

The past year has brought many accomplishments, but it also has been a time of struggle. As individuals, a university and a nation, we’ve faced challenges we never thought we would have to face. We are facing them still.

In years past I have viewed the beginning of a new year as a time to reflect on what I’ve done well and daydream about the fantastic things I’d like to do in the months ahead. But this year feels different to me. It feels less like a time to start fresh and more like a time to continue the hard work already begun.

In whatever fight we are engaged, we must continue the work already in progress – whether fighting racism or cancer, motivating med students or football players, tending patients or shrubbery, delivering packages or babies.
We must not, as it is so easy to do in the busyness of doing, lose sight of where we’ve been and where we’re going. We must remember that our victory does not lie in simply doing our best, but in honoring the efforts of all those who came before us.

So here we are in 2011 – in all its oddness, its angularity, its unbalanced precariousness – uncertain how to proceed. Perhaps if we embrace it for what it is, this uneven number so heavy laden with yesterday’s sorrows and victories, disappointments and discoveries – it will serve as the thorn that keeps us from complacency and spur us on to true greatness.

Posted 01/01/11