If you were as outraged by Little Johnny Howard’s comments on what it means to be an average Australian as I was, then go read this inspiring post by my friend silverblue on being passionately exceptional.
“I’m glad I’m not ‘average’. I don’t want to be ‘average’. I want to be ‘exceptional’, I want to be brilliant, passionately alive and involved in affairs here and abroad. I am ashamed of the way my country treats refugees, its indigenous inhabitants, its minorities, I am ashamed of our record with gay rights, of our past. My shame does not stop me acting, nor does it send me to bed guilty – when I can, I move forward, and in that I feel no fear or hesitation. My urge to change galvanises rather than paralyses – while I know that I am not specifically the ‘white Christian’ that people speak of when domination and degredation are going around, I am a representative of that group, which is why I want to do something to prove that we can be a force for change and freedom rather than repression and monoculture.”