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Efficacy

I remember seeing a lot of graffiti on the streets of Port-au-Prince, only the graffiti there was much different than what you would see here. It was all political graffiti: vote for this candidate, elect that candidate. It was like the need to end their poverty was written on the very walls of the city, people etching out their longing for change.

It's not like graffiti here doesn't communicate the same message. I read a quote today: a Russian general, sitting around a table of Russians and Americans and Britons, said, "All the people in the world have the same emotions." He was right. Gangs who spray paint their territory are expressing the same message as the Haitians in Port-au-Prince. They are communicating a need to influence their own and others' lives (in this case, to establish their territory). I'm definitely not justifying the gangs' behavior. I know as well as anyone how wrong it is to deface other people's property.

What I am saying is that what the poets write in quatrains, what the artists paint in oil, what the architects build with steel, and what presidents command with diplomacy, all express a desire to realize their own and others' potential. Look, then, for that potential in others. Help them to see it, highlight for them their own efficacy when they can't see it in themselves. We all need a little encouragement sometimes.

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