If I gave you a hammer – what would you do?
Many years ago when I was a small child (that’s like starting a post with “Once upon a Time….”), I listened as people sang along to Peter, Paul & Mary and wondered what we’d do if we had a hammer – would we “hammer in the morning, hammer in the evening, all over this land”?
I didn’t know it at the time but the hammer, of course, was metaphorical – representing people’s right to battle for social justice and equality and anything else that they felt necessary at the time.
Well, today we do have that hammer – and it is Social Media. It gives each and every one of us that platform our parents and our predecessors were asking for through their well-orchestrated protest rallies and a multitude of folk songs.
They fought for the right to have that tool. And now I sit here with it in my hands.
As I struggle to find my voice in this medium, I wonder what “they” would think of me today? I have the tools and the access to everything they wanted and fought for. Am I doing anything to justify that fight? Am I using that tool in a way that betters my little part of the world?
I am mindful of this as I look to write something in this blog or even to forward relevant information through a Twitter page? Sometimes my eagerness to be relevant and to make an impact delays my use of the social media vehicles that are available to me.
Part of me suspects, however, that if we used our social media tools as a hammer every morning and evening, our voice would be come somewhat less relevant in the process. But I don’t know – I am just in process of finding that voice.
I can say this without hesitation – I hope that some day, somewhere, those protestors and hippies and activists and future world leaders who longed so much for the tools we have before us – are eventually proud of the things I/we have done with them.
In their words – it truly is “Power to the People”.
