Love, Detroit.

It was an awkward evening for me, unlike no other. I was polite but didn’t really speak much in a room filled with young energy. I was just being really observant. It felt as though I didn’t belong or applied to the wrong program. It was Challenge Detroit’s Interview Day. The moment was weird because I felt that no one in the room was really like me. I mean there were individuals who were young and innovative like me, but no one LIKE me. I felt that no one had experienced what I experienced. No one had been through the difficulties I had endured… like growing up in my grandparents’ home of 10, where my sister and I had to share parents with 3 cousins who loss their biological parents to tragedy. How about growing up playing video games on summer nights in the living room then suddenly hearing gun shots and bullets piercing the air outside the window, being forced to duck and lay flat on the floor until the gun shots ceased?
What about growing up in a school system with a lack of sufficient resources and safety due to a school neighborhood that was vacant of love and security? I abhorred my laborious upbringing for a very long time. However, that was my norm. Then I realized that I was Dillon because of what Dillon saw. I learned that differences make Beauty and Beauty is also the Challenge to accept in moments of pain.

Challenge Detroit is a non-profit leadership fellowship that had given me the opportunity to really face my fear of emerging from unfamiliarity, making my Uncomfortability a strength. My experiences had led me to wisdom which had been combined with individuals who had just as much. My cohort was family. What was happening, though?

We had accomplished so much due to our willingness to commit to a city, Detroit, that we’re extremely passionate about. We had different backgrounds but it didn’t matter. The City was our common ground. I loved my fellows. I also discovered that Love had been the glue to our success. But why? Why was I suddenly willing to be so committed to a group of individuals who met me a few months before? Why was I willing to allow my passion to fuse with theirs? Why was I willing to share my experiences with individuals who could judge me? Then I asked myself, why not? The “why” was and will always be bigger than me. It will always be bigger than the Black boy from the Eastside who wakes up motivated to conquer. It’s bigger than those bullets that were heard in the living room of my grandparents’ house. It’s bigger than a household of 10 where poverty was present. It’s bigger than a flawed school system. However, no moment is bigger than Love.

It’s Love, Detroit and it will be Love that inflates us to float beyond our differences, coloring the sky with the balloons of our passions and talents.