COLUMN: Dr. King, an everyday hero

From Malik Wilson's, " RosZ," Fall '99 From Malik Wilson's, " RosZ," Fall '99It rained all day Monday. When I was struggling to get up, the dreary morning and steady hum of the rain told me to stay in bed. It didn't help that I had an obscenely comfortable bed and had stayed up until 2:45 the night before. My body felt at home underneath the warm sheets. Dimly aware that it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I tried to force upon myself the profundity of this realization. I couldn't. On Monday, January 18, 1999, at 10:14 in the morning, more mundane concerns filled my head. I thought about the dishes that had been in the sink for a week. I thought about the pile of bills on the kitchen table. I thought about what outfit I would wear that day. How far had we come in 30 years? What is the true legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.? Sadly, those questions floated obscurely in the back of my consciousness as I considered other more immediate questions. Where was I going to buy toothpaste tomorrow? Why do women use three times more toilet paper than men? Why are the Republicans acting like idiots? Martin Luther King Jr. hung around my thoughts like a semi-invited guest at someone else's party. Awkward. Quiet. Why hadn't Penn canceled school anyway? Wasn't the post office closed today? That should be the indicator of whether or not we have school. My mind stumbled from ordinary thought to ordinary thought. This Monday had none of the sparkling color or dazzling urgency that MLK's day should have. On this rainy Monday morning in the middle of January, I wasn't at the mountaintop. I was at 44th and Baltimore with one roll of toilet paper left and no job for the semester. To make matters worse, I was slightly disappointed because the weekend was over. Before I got on the trolley I grabbed a paper and began reading about the Jets-Broncos game the previous evening. I skimmed over the article on Martin Luther King. I thought long and hard about the fact that the Minnesota Vikings had lost and would not play in the super bowl. Martin Luther King Jr. was as far away as the clouds that were blanketing Philadelphia in a shade of gray. It was Monday and my column was due. I thought about writing the traditional elegiac tribute to MLK. Maybe I could make it pretty good. There was a pretty easy formula to do it, as long as you sounded grandiose and used words like "leadership" and "dreams" and phrases like "great men" and "our country's promise." But I had read columns like that before and was rarely moved. What's more, I didn't feel the rousing spirit or glowing enthusiasm required to make such a column work. As the day grew older and the sky grew darker, I scrambled for a good topic. This wasn't a very good day. I sighed. While waiting to cross Spruce Street, a car ran a yellow light and splashed brown water all over me. I wasn't even particularly bothered. There are days when we are heroes. Days when we hear the voices calling us, beckoning us onward. There are days when the symbols speak and life opens up for us to see. Days when our life has music in it and we rejoice in simply being alive. In times such as these we feel a heightened responsibility -- to ourselves, to our friends, to our history, to God. We are aware of our own interconnectedness and importance in all the intricate workings of the universe. But these are not the majority of days. Nine times out of 10, we worry that we don't have enough clean underwear to make it through the week, we worry that our team won't win the Super Bowl or that we won't get the job we really want. Most of the time we are consumed with our own personal anxieties about our own well-being. I know there will be people to inspire me on the days when I feel heroic. Days where I can stand up in class and represent the entire black race when the professor asks me a question. Days where I will make the difficult decision, the unpopular choice. On days like this, you can hear the voices of your heroes in your own. When I woke up Monday morning, the only voice I could hear was a groggier version of my own. But there was something important I did not realize until the day was nearly over. Something that had gone unnoticed as I was stirring during those early morning hours. Martin Luther King Jr. was my hero on that Monday morning. I got out of bed that morning because even on his slow mornings, Martin Luther King Jr. got out of bed. On this day when we would celebrate his legacy, I knew some part of me would have been deeply offended if I didn't too. En route, I didn't get bit by any dogs. I didn't refuse to give up my seat on the trolley. I wasn't even excited about going to school. But I went. On the days when we aren't heroes, what motivates us -- or doesn't motivate us -- is often unconscious. We carry our heroes with us. They affect our decisions in innumerable and immeasurable ways. It is important to think about who inspires us to act extraordinarily. But it is equally important to consider who affects our behavior during all the regular moments of our life. What we do when no one else is watching is just as important as what we do when the whole world is watching. It was raining steadily that morning as I climbed on the trolley. Today I was going to sit somewhere different. Instead of taking my usual seat in the back of the trolley, I sat directly behind the driver. The old woman across from me smiled. I looked out the window. I was glad I was going to school.