If you are reading this, you have probably already made your choice.
You are staying. You are fighting. You are one of the people who refuse to believe that progress should come at the cost of someone else’s pain.
I was reminded of that choice during the Breakfast of Champions with Aguila Youth Leadership. It was a room full of people who have decided to stay. Educators, mentors, parents, and community builders who refuse to walk away from the hard work of shaping a better world.
And as I spoke that morning, two stories kept echoing in my mind.
Two Stories That Hold a Mirror to Us
Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a story called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
It describes a bright and joyful city, a place of celebration and beauty. But its happiness depends on one suffering child locked away in darkness. Everyone in the city knows this truth. Some accept it. Some walk away.
It is a haunting metaphor for what we tolerate and what we are willing to look past in the name of progress.
Years later, N. K. Jemisin wrote The Ones Who Stay and Fight. She imagined a different kind of world, one that refuses to build its joy on someone else’s suffering. Her citizens stay. They fight. They work to build something better.
The first story confronts us with the temptation to look away.
The second invites us to do the harder thing, to stay and act.
Why These Stories Matter Right Now
We are living through a moment that will define what kind of ancestors we become.
Technology is advancing faster than ever. Artificial intelligence, automation, and algorithms shape the way we live and work. But none of these things can choose compassion. None of them can decide what is just. Only we can do that.
Le Guin and Jemisin remind us that every generation faces its own version of the child in the dark room. Sometimes it is a student who is two or three grade levels behind in reading. Sometimes it is a community left out of opportunity. Sometimes it is a system designed for efficiency rather than dignity.
Progress that ignores people is not progress. It is abandonment dressed as efficiency.
We can build smarter systems. The question is whether we can build a more human one.
The Reality of Staying
Staying is hard.
Some days you wonder if it matters. If anyone notices the extra hour you stayed, the student you encouraged, the policy you challenged, or the kindness you offered when it would have been easier to stay quiet.
Some days it feels like shouting into the wind while the machinery of efficiency keeps moving forward.
But here is what I know.
Every small act of care matters. Every conversation, every mentor moment, every classroom that makes room for one more student, all of it is shaping the world we are going to leave behind.
Staying is not a posture of resistance. It is an act of love.
What We Build Together
I see this spirit every day.
In educators who stay late to help a student read.
In mentors who keep showing up even when the results take time.
In organizations like Aguila Youth Leadership that believe in young people before the world does.
We are not building a perfect world. We are building a just one. A world that chooses people over profit, dignity over efficiency, and compassion over convenience.
The Choice Ahead
So here is what I am asking.
What is your version of staying?
What is the one thing you will refuse to optimize away?
Who is the one person you will refuse to leave behind?
What is the one conversation you will have even when it feels uncomfortable?
Because the world we are building is not being decided in boardrooms or policy papers. It is being decided in those small acts of refusal, in every moment we choose to stay when walking away would be easier.
And if you are reading this, I already know your answer.
You are staying.
The real question is, what will you build while you are here?
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