Rarely Heard Motivational Quotes

She bleeds poetry. She is an old soul. She has already existed since the day the Earth gave birth to nature. She felt the sweet caress of the wind touch her skin and the silent cries of night. She heard the screaming of thunder as the lightning bolt stabbed the heart of the weeping sky. She saw everything bloom and heard a soft sound of relief as they threw their burdens into the listening earth. She is strong enough to bear it all as time changes and has learned to live with the pain of losing and winning. She can't be defeated, nor be broken. She'll continue to live again and again. And if someone were to break her down or break her heart, she couldn't be shaken. She'll stand up and let poetry bleed into her. She's rare and SHE IS ME.

I have the greatest respect for conservation biologists. I care very much about conserving the rain forest and the wildlife in Indonesia, but I also found it disheartening. It often feels like you are fighting a losing battle, especially in areas where people depend so heavily on these natural resources for their own survival. After graduation, I decided to return to the original behavioral questions that motivated me. Although monogamy—both social and genetic—is rare in mammals, social monogamy is the norm in birds. Plus, birds are everywhere. I figured that if I turned my attention to studying our feathered friends, I wouldn’t have to spend months on end trying to secure research permits and travel visas from foreign governments. I wouldn’t even have to risk getting bitten by leeches (a constant problem in the Mentawais*). Birds seemed like the perfect choice for my next act. But I didn’t know anyone who studied birds. My PhD was in an anthropology department, without many links to researchers in biology departments. Serendipitously, while applying for dozens of academic jobs, I stumbled across an advertisement for a position managing Dr. Ellen Ketterson’s laboratory at Indiana University. The ad described Ketterson’s long-term project on dark-eyed juncos. Eureka! Birds! At the time, her lab primarily focused on endocrinology methods like hormone assays (a method to measure how much of a hormone is present in blood or other types of biological samples), because they were interested in how testosterone levels influenced behavior. I had no experience with either birds or hormone assays. But I had spent the last several years developing DNA sequencing and genotyping skills, which the Ketterson lab was just starting to use. I hoped that my expertise with fieldwork and genetic work would be seen as beneficial enough to excuse my lack of experience in ornithology and endocrinology. I submitted my application but heard nothing back. After a while, I did something that was a bit terrifying at the time. Of the dozens of academic positions I had applied to, this felt like the right one, so I tried harder. I wrote to Dr. Ketterson again to clarify why I was so interested in the job and why I would be a good fit, even though on paper I seemed completely wrong for it. I described why I wanted to work with birds instead of primates. I explained that I had years of fieldwork experience in challenging environments and could easily learn ornithological methods. I listed my laboratory expertise and elaborated on how beneficial it could be to her research group, and how easily I could learn to do hormone assays and why they were important for my research too. She wrote me back. I got the job.

Devotees of the dominant nationalist Christianity are not known by the God of creation, for they instead have clung to the illusion of the God of white supremacy. Therefore, if you read this book enfolded in whiteness, please note the following trigger warning: you will feel anxiety, defensiveness, anger, shame, discomfort, and stress. Some of you are likely to defend your actions, rushing to assert “we are really good people in spite of it all.” But if you can work past your defense mechanisms, you will have the rare opportunity of hearing how communities of color speak among themselves whenever whites are not in earshot. You will have the rare privilege of eavesdropping on our conversation and looking over our shoulders to overhear perspectives you might never have imagined. What you do with all of this is totally up to you. Whether you choose liberation from racist sins is totally your choice. But as I said, your salvation is not the primary concern nor the purpose of this book. By now, some of you are probably asking whether I, as author, have a responsibility to raise the consciousness of oppressors and thus have an obligation to try to save white people from their folly. No doubt silence denies justice. But all too often, people of color are expected to “speak truth to power.” This expression has always distressed me because it assumes power is ignorant of the truth and that there is the potential for redemption when truth is heard. And because the abused and misused know the truth, they must shoulder the burden of speaking truth to their persecutors, regardless of the consequences. I maintain that those in power know the truth all too well, yet still choose unjust and oppressive policies because they are profitable. I am not motivated to speak truth to power. I would rather focus on speaking truth to the powerless who have been taught for generations to believe the lie of those who shape our unjust social structures. Speaking truth with (not to) the disenfranchised raises consciousness and decolonizes minds, which can lead to praxis that might bring about change and maybe even change for the better.